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_ Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/standinguptolifeOOatki 


STANDING UP TO LIFE 


WO Rew IS bay 
Frederick A. Atkins 


Standing Up to Life 
A book of suggestions and advice for a 


, courageous attitude toward the problems 


Of Life nes siecle aed ae eee $1.25 
Life Worth While 
A volume of Inspiration for Young Men 
of dl oday us Pa Ce een 1.00 
First Battles 


and How to Fight Them 


Friendly Chats with Young Men.. .50 


Moral Muscle 
and How to Use It 


A Brotherly Talk with Young Men. .s50 


Standing Up To 





FREDERICK A. “ATKIN S 


Author of ‘‘Moral Muscle’; ‘First Battles and How to 
Fight Them’’; “Life Worth While,”’ Ete. 





New York CHICAGO 


Fleming H. Revell Company 


LoNDON AND EpDINBURGH 


Copyright, McMxxv, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 


Printed in the United States of America 


New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 


To 
1 fat veae a 
A Good Friend. 





Preface 


(aay) EORGE BERNARD SHAW has said 
sh ) (‘ But for the life of me,” he says, “I 
A ae cannot remember where or when’’) 

2) that Jesus was the only gentleman who 
came out of the war with His reputation intact. 

“ Like all sinners,’ wrote my friend, H. W. Mas- 
singham, the famous Editor of the London Nation, 
“I’m fond of Jesus Christ, but I never make an 
effort to do what He tells me to do. Somehow this 
world has slipped out of His control, and yet, if tt 
knew, tt would find in Him a quite happy and easy 
way of living.” 

Olive Schreiner, when a very young child, read 
for the first time the Sermon on the Mount. “ Ske 
van to her mother, putting her finger on the passage 
in great excitement, and saying, ‘ Look what I’ve 
found. Look what I’ve found. It’s what I’ve 
known all along. Now we can live like this, 
When she found, as she very soon did, that people 
did not ‘live like this, and had not the smallest 
intention of doing so, she chilled rapidly.” 





That is really the theme of this little book. The 
world today is restless and distracted because it 
has rejected the teaching of Christ. It is true, we 
render Him a certain homage, for we realize that if 


7 


8 PREFACE 


we had followed Him, He would have saved us 
from the wholesale carnage of the war and the 
devastating vengeance of the peace. But we still 
commit the incredible folly of ignoring His teach- 
ing. We know that He has a secret to impart—the 
secret of how to live—but we have no intention of 
accepting His terms. As a matter of fact, we have 
lost our way. If the world is to escape disaster, it 
must turn to Christ and follow His way of living. 
For He alone can bring us personal happiness, 
social justice and international brotherhood. 
FE. AvAY 


London. 


On 


. ON 
. ON 
. ON 
wON: 
. ON 
. ON 
. ON 
. ON 
. ON 
. ON 
. ON 
. ON 
. ON 
. ON 
. ON 


Contents 


PuTtinc First THincs First 
Bretnc L&tss THAN ONE’s Best 
SEEING THE BEst IN PEOPLE . 
KEEPING Up APPEARANCES 
HAVING A SENSE oF Humor . 
TAKING FRESH COURAGE . 
TAKING ONESELF Too SERIOUSLY 
SPEAKING A WoRD IN SEASON 
Sirtinc LooseLy To THINGS . 
RELIGION AND FRIENDSHIP 


LETTING Byconrts Bg Bycongs 


Purtine THE BLAME SOMEWHERE ELSE . 


TRYING To Dopck DiFricuLTY 
SERVICEABLE SAINTS . 
THE VALUE OF LOYALTY . 


MAKING CHRISTIANS CHRISTIANS 


13 
25 
33 
43 
51 
59 
67 
75 
85 
95 


105 


be) 


LEQ 
127 
. 139 
. 149 


Beha 
ca 
(oan ae att 


hay 


i 





I 


ON PUTTING FIRST THINGS FIRST 


“The Carthaginians had wealth beyond the 
dreams of avarice together with a commerce 
which made them masters of the Mediterranean; 
yet, in the sequel, they became the mere puppets 
of a soulless splendor and ultimately they were 
crushed beneath their weight of golden circum- 
stance.’—Dr. S. ParkEs CaDMAN, 


“Gold is the obvious and natural idol of the 
Anglo-Saxon. He is always trying to make 
money; he reckons everything in coin; he bows 
down before a great heap and sneers as he passes 
a little heap. He has ‘a natural, instinctive ad- 
miration of wealth for tts own sake?” 


—WALTER BAGEHOT, 


“ The things seen are trivial; the unseen things 
are majestic.’—S1r Oxiver Lonpce. 


I 
ON PUTTING FIRST THINGS FIRST 


ASG RDINARY sound sense would seem to 

aA & suggest that we should give priority to 

‘33// > the things that matter most, and yet 
G32) the very last thing we do is to put first 
things first. To attend to the things of the spirit 
before thinking of the demands of the flesh would 
appear to be the inevitably sane and wise course, 
but the vast majority of people would laugh at 
the suggestion. They would undoubtedly regard 
money as by far the most important thing in the 
world. We all have false conceptions of what is 
good and lasting and of what is not so good and 
merely temporary, and so we lead a topsy-turvy, 
one-eyed, badly-proportioned sort of life, building 
paper houses on shifting sand instead of abiding 
mansions on the eternal rock. That is why even 
the prosperous are discontented and unhappy— 
they have devoted themselves to their fragile 
possessions and forgotten all about their imperish- 
able souls. We put rights before duties, cleverness 
before character, appetites before convictions. We 
prefer showy stunts to dull thoroughness. In 
politics, we give first place to the swagger of ma- 


13 e 





EE ————————————————————_ 
14 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


terialism and the exclusiveness of nationalism, 
when we ought to be thinking of the shame of the 
slums, the tyranny of industrialism, and the peril 
of international hate. One day we shall have gov- 
ernments that will put first things first, and work 
for world-brotherhood and international peace, but 
that will be when the people are represented by 
men who have shared their burdens and know their 
needs. Thus the masses will solve their own prob- 
lems, and shape their own destiny. As Principal 
L. P. Jacks suggests in his book, A Living Uni- 
verse, the old politics which specialized in the quest 
for material power will give way to the new politics 
which will be essentially cooperative rather than 
competitive. 

“What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole 
world, and lose his own soul? ’”—that is, if he puts 
secondary things first? We talk of a man who has 
succeeded in amassing wealth as a man who has 
risen. What has he risen to? Not to any spiritual 
elevation or to any increased capacity for enjoy- 
ment. What has he gained? He cannot eat any 
more, for his stomach was the first of his servants 
to go on strike. He travels about in a luxurious 
limousine and so deprives himself of healthy exer- 
cise, his home is about as cosy as a cathedral—he 
has twenty rooms and lives in two; he has more 
leisure and it only brings him an intolerable bore- 
dom that drives him into feverish, debilitating and 
vulgar pleasures. So prince and pauper in one, he 


ON PUTTING FIRST THINGS FIRST 15 


finds life chill, sterile, dull. ‘‘ For man walketh in 
a vain shadow and disquieteth himself in vain, he 
heapeth up riches and cannot tell who shall gather 
them.” He used to drive and control a business, 
now a business drives and controls him. He has 
been caught in a machine from which there is no 
escape. He endures the crushing servitude of a 
barren materialism. The fact is, man cannot live 
by bread alone, and when he is fool enough to 
attempt it he suffers the dull ache of a starved soul, 
and a frustrated life. It is hard enough to be a 
Christian under any circumstances, but there is 
one way by which you can make it almost impos- 
sible—you can become rich. The worst of it is 
that the pursuit of wealth can become such a blind- 
ing, devouring passion that its victims do not even 
know their own peril. To all of us it must have 
seemed rather strange at first that Jesus should 
say: ‘“‘ Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” One 
would rather have expected Him to say: “ Ye can- 
not serve God and the devil.” But He knew what 
He was talking about. He knew that mammon is 
always God’s greatest competitor. The opposite of 
faith is not unbelief but materialism. I doubt very 
much whether any man ever set out deliberately to 
serve the devil, but almost everybody sets out to 
serve Mammon. 

What miserably inadequate rewards the rich 
man gets in return for all his Herculean efforts 
to win material prizes! I have seen a multi- 





16 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


millionaire lunching on a glass of hot water and 
two wheaten biscuits. It was all his recalcitrant 
stomach would accept. The other day, in a Lon- 
don club, I found a rich man pacing restlessly up 
and down the hall, looking angrily at his watch and 
muttering imprecations on his unhappy chauffeur 
who was a few minutes late. Pointing to a row of 
taxis outside, I said: “‘ My chauffeur is outside 
from eight o’clock in the morning until midnight— 
indeed, there are fourteen or fifteen of him always 
waiting for me.”’ These rich men cannot even buy 
anything with their money—except wearing anxie- 
ties and trumpery honors and houses too big to be 
homelike. Their minds seldom soar towards poetry 
and music, but only function in board-rooms and 
offices. They know no breathless ecstasy, no satis- 
fying spiritual vision. It was a well known “ cap- 
tain of industry ” who, after two days of infinite 
boredom in the Eternal City, said to a friend as he 
left the hotel: ‘ You can ’ave Rome.” They know 
nothing of pictures, except their price, they judge 
books by the richness of their bindings, and the 
most inspired music only sends them to sleep. 
And when they retire! With no cause to fight for 
and not even an idea to play with, their tragic 
condition of misery and dejection is best expressed 
in the words of Scripture: “In the morning thou 
shalt say, Would God it were even! And at even 
thou shalt say, Would God it were morning.” 

If we starve the inner life we must inevitably 


ON PUTTING FIRST THINGS FIRST D7, 


suffer sooner or later from shallowness and dis- 
illusionment. The best investment in the world is 
not to be bought in Wall Street; it is to be found 
in a serviceable, awakening, stimulating education, 
the development of a keen, lively, exploring mind, 
and in cleanliness and rectitude of character. A 
popular and very prosperous novelist once told me 
that his supreme ambition was to write one good 
hymn, and he explained why. A successful novel 
soon dies, but a good hymn is immortal. 

One would think that when we got safely inside 
the church we should naturally put first things 
first. I wonder! Do preachers always put first 
things first? Some of them put safety first— 
which, as Dr. W. B. Selbie says, is “a good rule 
for pedestrians in our crowded streets but a bad 
one for thinkers in a time of reconstruction.” I 
heard, some years ago, of a minister who had the 
words, “Sir, we would see Jesus,” pasted in his 
pulpit where it could not be ignored. This might 
appear to be an unnecessary precaution, but it is 
astonishing how little you hear about Jesus from 
Christian pulpits. During the War I used to get 
Canadian and British officers in London to attend 
some of our leading churches. It was not always 
an easy matter, but there were two preachers to 
whom they would eagerly and intently listen—Dr. 
Glover and Dr. Orchard. One night I asked some 
of them why, and they at once replied that these 
two men talked nearly all the time about Jesus and 


18 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


appeared to think that He meant what He said! 
They told me—and my own experience confirms 
what they said—that you might hear a dozen ser- 
mons with scarcely a reference to the life and teach- 
ing of Jesus. They said they were sick of Old 
Testament stories and Pauline theology, and I 
should be sorry to record their opinion of some of 
the Psalms. But they adored Jesus Christ and were 
ready to run after any preacher who would talk 
about Him in a language they could understand. 
‘¢ Shall I tell you what Jesus can do? ” said a Ca- 
nadian officer who was returning to the trenches, 
‘ He can help you to be a gentleman in hell! ” We 
are greatly in need of preachers who will speak 
straight to our present-day life, with all its disil- 
lusionment and tiredness, its enervating fever and 
its disabling fears—men of fine insight, expanding 
vision and passionate sincerity. The Church will 
impress the world, not by a declaration of theolog- 
ical formulas, but by a demonstration of spiritual 
power, not by the assertion of authority, but by the 
mastery of life. 

I wonder sometimes whether we are right when 
we put preaching before prayer? Because we do. 
It is extraordinarily difficult for people to find a 
church to pray in, for most of our churches only 
condescend to open their doors for three hours a 
week. Suppose a man suddenly wants to pray. 
Most churches will tell him that he can wait until 
eleven o’clock on Sunday morning when he will be 


ON PUTTING FIRST THINGS FIRST ity 


able to listen to a curate reciting collects or hear a 
sermon by a more or less popular preacher. I 
know a stern and stalwart Protestant who, when 
he wishes to pray, quietly steals into a Roman 
Catholic church. I can conceive of circumstances 
under which it would be vastly more important that 
I should speak to Jesus than that a minister should 
speak to me. 

In all conferences on Christian Unity convened 
in recent times we have heard of nothing but the 
importance of agreeing amongst ourselves. Is that 
really the first thing to be considered? Is it not 
much more important that we should agree with 
Christ? As a matter of fact, we shall never agree 
amongst ourselves about sacraments or creeds; but 
what an amazing difference it would make if we 
agreed to obey Christ and accept His teaching as 
the supreme law of our lives. The divisions 
amongst Christians are no doubt humiliating and 
damaging. But the way to end them is not the way 
of reluctant compromise and timid expediency. 
Let us put first things first, and try to reach a 
living union based on an attempt to carry out the 
will of Christ, not only in our individual lives, but 
by applying it to social, commercial and political 
conditions. 

And the man who wants to know all about God 
before trying to do His will and all about religion 
before committing himself to its service is not put- 
ting first things first. Make the venture of faith 





20 STANDING UP TOURS 


first and prove it by experience afterwards. It is 
not of much use believing anything unless you 
venture upon it and act as if it were true. Remem- 
ber these words from the “ Imitation”: ‘“‘ What 
does it avail to dispute and discourse high con- 
cerning the Trinity and lack humility and thus 
displease the Trinity?” “This it is to know 
Christ,” said Melanchthon, “ not to dispute of His 
nature or the modes of His incarnation, but to 
accept the blessings He gives.”” In Christ we have 
the only guarantee of social progress and personal 
peace. His ideal of life survives all attempts to 
ignore and suppress it. The hostility of its ene- 
mies cannot kill it, the blunders of its friends can 
only temporarily hinder it. Everything else has 
been tried and failed. Coercion and repression, 
craft and cleverness, the pomp of power and the 
capture of wealth—they have achieved no real suc- 
cess and brought no happiness or peace to the 
world. Christ’s amazing, disturbing Gospel of 
Love still stands waiting to be accepted and tried. 
When it controls our wills and masters our lives, 
all the old contaminating pleasures and futile pas- 
sions and trivial preoccupations will drop away and 
interest us no more. Give Christ the key to your 
soul—that is the first thing. He will then give you 
a key—the key that unlocks the secrets of a larger 
and more abundant life. 

“T only speak my own experience,” said Mark 
Rutherford, ‘“ I am not talking theology or philos- 


ON PUTTING FIRST THINGS FIRST 21 


ophy; I know what I am saying, and can point out 
the times and places when I should have fallen if 
I had been able to rely for guidance upon nothing 
better than a commandment or a deduction. But 
the pure, calm, heroic image of Jesus confronted 
me and I succeeded. I had no doubt as to what 
He would have done, and through Him I did not 
doubt what I ought to do.” You cannot have a 
merely negative encounter with Christ. One look 
and something has happened. Admiration blos- 
soms into loyalty and loyalty into love. Then you 
discover that if you want to have Him as your 
friend, you have got to be a better man. 

Dr. T. R. Glover, the “ Public Orator ” at Cam- 
bridge, tells a story of an agnostic friend of his 
who set out to save a drunkard in order to prove 
that a man’s habits could be transformed without 
the aid of religion. He admitted that it was a 
filthy job. The man was so weak that he was 
utterly unable to pass a public house (a saloon) 
unless some one had hold of his arm, and the only 
way of saving him was to give him continuous 
comradeship, take him for walks, sit up with him 
at night, and stand by him all the time. If his 
guardian went up to London for a day he immedi- 
ately went out and got drunk. Still the experiment 
went forward, and the optimistic unbeliever de- 
clared that he would stick to his friend and save 
him without any Christian assistance. One day 
Dr. Glover met him and said: ‘‘ What about your 


22 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


drunken friend? ” “ Ah,” was the reply, “I was 
getting on fairly well with the job when a lot of 
rough people in red jerseys arrived with an atro- 
cious brass band. Somehow, these repulsive fel- 
lows got hold of him. I don’t know exactly what 
happened, but they seem to have made him kneel 
down and pray. Anyhow, he can walk past a 
‘pub’ by himself now.” Exactly. The Salvation 
Army may have its faults, but it does put first 
things first. 


IT 


ON BEING LESS THAN ONE'S BEST 


“What do ye more than others?” 
—MAtTTHEW 5: 47. 


“Tf any man will... take away thy coat, let 
him have thy cloke also, and whosoever shall 
compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.” 

—MATTHEW 5: 40-41. 


“There are many people who are morally 
sprawling, and with no more compaciness and 
stiffness than a jellyfish. . . . Are we sprawi- 
ers and floppers and drifters? or conscience- 
controlled, self-upholding and_ self-propelling 
beings, moving precisely and firmly on God-given 
purposes? . . . Youand I say that we wish 
to be useful Christians, active and faithful 
builders of the city of God, through home and 
industry and citizenship and the Church. Un- 
questionably we wish it; but do we will 1t?” 

—Dr. Henry SLOANE COFFIN, 


“What does the Christian character or bal- 
anced life mean? Faith without credulity; 
conviction without bigotry; charity without 
condescension; courage without pugnacity; 
self-respect without vanity; humility without 
obsequiousness; love of humanity without senti- 
mentality; and meekness with power,” 

—C. E. Hucues. 


II 


ON BEING LESS THAN ONE’S BEST 






¥>)ERHAPS our greatest danger in life is 
=] DB, ki in easy satisfactions, low expectations, 
j an spiritual lethargy and moral inertia. 
<@ Kes Our tendency is to drift—and when we 
drift we drift into danger. Ships never drift into 
harbor—men have to slave and suffer and sweat to 
get them there. A friend of mine, when he was 
married, decided that he would wear evening dress 
at dinner every night, not because he wanted to do 
it, but because he had noticed how easily married 
people slip into careless inattention, and fail to ob- 
serve the minor politenesses and amenities, and he 
felt that the very fact of putting on a dinner jacket 
might save him from slackness. George Augustus 
Sala, the great journalist, wore a clean white waist- 
coat every day, winter and summer, and when he 
was challenged about his extravagance, he said: 
“ No man could commit a murder in a white waist- 
coat.” We all require some process of moral disci- 
pline to keep us up to the mark. One of the advan- 
tages of joining a church is that it is something to 
live up to. You might feel inclined to take things 
easily, but you cannot let down the church to which 


fas 





ee ee ee —————eEeEeEE——————————————_E= 
26 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


you have voluntarily given your loyalty. You are 
compelled to investigate your own life and probe 
your own character with ruthless sincerity. 

I remember that, many years ago, when attend- 
ing a great religious conference in England as the 
representative of a daily newspaper I was asked to 
send up a symposium on some great question of 
the day—to be contributed by a dozen Church 
leaders. Nearly all the ministers I approached 
rattled off a few careless sentences expressing their 
views. But Dr. Clifford did not work that way— 
even in the most trivial duties he was never any- 
thing less than his best. He sat down and wrote a 
paragraph with grave consideration and meticulous 
care, and I reached out for the copy. But he still 
spent another ten minutes polishing up the sen- 
tences, erasing words and substituting others—and 
even then he insisted on writing out a fair copy. I 
think he regarded slackness as a sin somewhat 
difficult to forgive. 

Our failure to reach the highest is frequently 
due to some weak spot, some small infirmity of 
temper or disposition. A man may possess many 
fine and noble qualities—he may have lofty ideals 
and undimmed courage—and yet be held back by 
some ridiculous frailty of temperament. What can 
be done about it? The man who has a weak spot 
in his body doesn’t trifle with it—he seeks the 
advice of the greatest specialist he can find. And 
we shall be wise to take our spiritual weaknesses— 


ON BEING LESS THAN ONE’S BEST a 


those wretched sicknesses of the spirit that trip us 
up and hold us back and torment us—to the great 
spiritual expert, the only reliable specialist of the 
soul, the great Physician whose “ touch has still its 
ancient power.” 

Idle, parasitic people may be easily pleased with 
the mere froth of things, but surely we must be 
dissatisfied if we do not achieve a certain spiritual 
mastery over life. We go hot with shame some- 
times when we think of our failures and betrayals, 
and of how easily we have accepted the second best 
when we might have girded up our loins and by 
vigorous discipline have climbed the heights. Our 
piety has been so shoddy and unproductive. We 
thought we were so sublimely orthodox when we 
were only miserably intolerant. A man will spend 
years learning and practising the violin, he will let 
no day pass without going through strenuous phys- 
ical exercises to keep his body fit, he will devote 
half his life to art, and then confess that he has 
only touched the fringe of achievement, he will 
even give years to the practice of billiards—and 
yet he expects to become a Christian in ten min- 
utes! He can start being a Christian in one sec- 
ond, but the process of spiritual culture means long 
and painful discipline. 

A friend of mine, a young minister, once stayed 
the night with a great Scottish preacher, mystic 
and saint. The old man, with characteristic hu- 
mility, insisted that his young guest should occupy 


28 STANDING) UP TO LIE 


his own large bedroom, while he himself slept in a 
small adjoining dressing-room. About four o’clock 
in the morning the young man woke up and heard 
someone talking—apparently with much emotion 
and sorrow. He listened, and found it was the 
famous old saint pouring out his heart to God in a 
very agony of supplication, confessing with bitter 
tears his sins and shortcomings, and begging for 
pardon and grace. My friend thought: ‘“ This 
saintly old mystic has something I have not got. 
Have I stumbled on his secret and discovered the 
source of his power? ”? When we examine our dis- 
cordant life and see how often we have been less 
than our best, we must surely become very humble. 
And as we humble ourselves it will be possible for 
God to lift us up. Humility is a beautiful and win- 
ning grace—until you begin to be proud of it. It 
is said of Carlyle that ‘‘ he preached humility with 
arrogance.”’ Humility is not weakness, as so many 
people suppose. ‘The self-satisfied man, sunk in 
insipidity and stagnation, is the weak man. If you 
are sure of yourself you do not know yourself. 
The strong man must of necessity be the one who 
knows his failures and limitations and trusts only 
in the limitless power of God. 


“* You held not to whatsoever was true’; 
Said my own voice talking to me. 
“Whatsoever was just you were slack to see; 
Kept not things lovely and pure in view’ ; 
Satd my own voice talking to me.’ 


ON BEING LESS THAN ONE’S BEST the 


Even churches do not always live up to their 
best. If they had been loyal to Christ and His 
teaching there would have been no war. When one 
thinks of some of the slovenly and fossilized meth- 
ods of Christian propaganda, the medieval machin- 
ery, the absence of all astuteness and enterprise, 
sometimes even of common sense—one is almost 
reduced to tears. And church members are a good 
deal below their possible best when they are morose 
and melancholic. It ought to be such a blithe, 
lively, exhilarating thing to be a Christian. Surely 
it is almost unforgivable for a Christian to be 
stodgy and dull and content just to shuffle along. 
The peril of the Church today is not in the activi- 
ties of its enemies, but in the perfunctory alle- 
giance, restricted enthusiasm and diluted faith of 
its followers. 

Soon we shall be growing old—and we must 
beware of the tragedy of old age, which is simply 
this: that losing our physical strength and alert- 
ness we discover that we have no spiritual re- 
sources to fall back upon. Those who expect to 
find happiness in personal comfort and financial 
security are doomed to disappointment. To come 
upon old age no kinder, or wiser, than we were in 
middle life, to have sacrificed the things that en- 
dure for the things that perish, to end life in a 
mean, pitiful emptiness, there is the supreme dis- 
aster. I remember a very rich man who said to me 
about his wealth: “It was good fun getting it— 


eT ER EEE 
30 STANDING UP TO BIFE 


but I sacrificed too much for it. I committed in- 
tellectual suicide. Now I am lonely, restless, dis- 
satisfied.” The time will come when our only 
resources will be spiritual and intellectual. How 
rich shall we be then? Have you ever noticed that 
the most likable people are not the people who 
possess a lot of things, but the people who like a 
lot of things—that is people who have a sunny gift 
of appreciation? Old age need not be tiresome 
and stale and disheveled if we have a vital contact 
with life, if we insist on never being less than our 
best, if we keep the invigorating enthusiasm and 
penetrating curiosity of the student, if in solitude 
and prayer we drop all our selfishness and pre- 
tence and gain power to live the disciplined and 
dedicated life. 


Il 


ON SEEING THE BEST IN PEOPLE 


“T think it is really good in practise to believe 
in the freedom of the will for yourself and deny 
it for everybody else—visit the responsibility for 
your own choice as hard as you can on yourself, 
but when you are judging other people look 
for external causes of their behavior.’—BisHoP 
TEMPLE, OF MANCHESTER. 


“Judge not, the working of his brain 
And of his heart thou canst not see; 
What looks to thy dim eyes a stain, 
In God’s pure light may only be 
A scar brought from some well-won field— 
Where thou would’st only faint and yield.” 
—A. A. PROCTER. 


“Those who love not their fellow beings live 
unfruitful lives and prepare for their old age a 
miserable grave.’—SHELLEY. 


Iil 


ON SEEING THE BEST IN PEOPLE 


5 BE are all inclined to interfere too much 
#2 in other people’s business and to dis- 
cuss in a censorious spirit their meth- 
HKVEFI ods of conducting it. We sort out 
Peri with such righteous assurance and _ label 
them with such cynical certainty. Their acci- 
dental failures, their sorry mishaps, their sordid 
disasters, their pathetic weaknesses, their stum- 
bling frailties—nothing escapes us; we judge, be- 
little and condemn. We indulge in gossip and 
conjecture, in plausible insinuations and easy as- 
sumptions. The careless, flippant levity with 
which we judge one another is enough to bruise 
the very heart of Jesus, Who understood humanity 
so perfectly and always saw the good in everybody. 
There is something baffling and incalculable 
about men and women. You never know enough 
to enable you to judge them. Lord Morley, who 
had the appearance and the reputation of an aus- 
tere and monkish ascetic was really very fond of 
good wine and cigars and enjoyed lunching in 
fashionable restaurants. Charles Hawtrey, the 
actor, who was supposed to be a frivolous world- 


33 








UD SOAR Manoa MUM le aS OS Nt 
34 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


ling, knew the Bible as few men know it and was 
a devout believer in the efficacy of prayer. “ We 
are like islands,” says Kipling, “ and we shout to 
each other across the sea of misunderstanding.” I 
once knew a man who seemed entirely self-seeking 
and self-satisfied; yet he hurled himself with reck- 
less enthusiasm into an unpopular crusade and 
nearly ruined his reputation. Before you become 
the implacable judge or the callous inquisitor, re- 
member that even the moral failure may all the 
time be painfully striving against temptation and 
fighting a secret and desperate battle for spiritual 
freedom. There is no courage like the courage of 
the coward. 

We really cannot divide the human race into 
two classes, and say that one is hopelessly bad and 
the other superlatively good. Think of yourseli— 
would you fit comfortably into either of these two 
classes? The great mistake made at the Peace 
Conference, as Norman Angell has pointed out, 
was in dividing Europe into two distinct classes 
—the bad nations, that were so completely bad 
that they did not deserve any protection, and the 
good nations, that were so extraordinarily good 
that they could be trusted with unlimited power. 
Europe has suffered ever since as the result of that 
devastating blunder. 

It always irritates me when, on asking some good 
person to help a distressed brother, I am met with 
the foolish inquiry: ‘‘ Is it a deserving case?” As 


ON SEEING THE BEST IN PEOPLE 35 


a rule, it certainly is not. The man who is down 
and out has been just an average sort of ass, and 
has helped considerably to bring his troubles on 
himself. But am I a deserving case? Is anybody 
a deserving case? The mother cares for her child, 
not because it is a supernaturally good child, but 
because the helpless mite happens to be hers, to 
love and live for. We have got to love all sorts of 
tricky and unpleasant people simply because of the 
eternal mystery and miracle that Jesus loved them 
enough to die for them. They are extremely un- 
attractive, but they are not all bad and they have 
perfectly dazzling potentialities. The reason why 
the salvation of the world proceeds so slowly is 
because, even in churches, there are snobbish and 
pessimistic models of virtue who do not like sinners 
and do not really believe they can be saved. They 
would be indignant if a mob of unwashed rascals 
invaded the sanctity of their pews, and they are 
rather like barbed wire entanglements around their 
select, exclusive churches. They remind me of the 
missionary’s story about a native of Nigeria who 
put up on the door of his house the text, “ God is 
love,’ and wrote underneath, “No admittance.” 
Sheila Kaye-Smith, the brilliant young English 
novelist, holds that we ought to pray “ Forgive us 
our righteousness.” Paul also thought very little 
of our righteousnesses—he alluded to them as 
filthy rags. 

How are we to love the impossible people we 


SS eee 
36 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


now so thoroughly dislike? I suggest two meth- 
ods: We can look into their tired, frightened faces 
and see the lines engraved by suffering. Watch 
their dull, hungry eyes, always looking for some- 
thing they have lost, eyes in which you can trace 
stabbing sorrows, humiliating failures and cruel 
limitations. And then kneel down and pray for 
them. You cannot dislike the people you have 
prayed for. You have taken them to Jesus, intro- 
duced them to Him, asked Him to make them hap- 
pier and easier to get on with; and henceforth you 
have got to help Him to do it. It will be anything 
but easy. It is very hard to be patient with fum- 
bling inefficiency, and to endure stolid and exas- 
perating stupidity. It is even difficult, sometimes, 
to stand what Michael Sadleir calls “the genial 
obtuseness of the upright.” But the Love that can 
purge life of its vileness can also wash away its 
fear and distrust and hate. 

And how much there is in people to like and 
admire! Think of the incredible kindness of the 
poor! I have often thought, on returning from a 
holiday, what a debt of gratitude I owe to a multi- 
tude of railroad men, hotel servants and ship’s 
stewards for their courtesy and patience, cheery 
helpfulness and unfailing good nature. The aver- 
age man and woman is not having such an amazing 
good time. They have not got so very much out 
of life. They look back on thwarted ambitions 
and futile struggles. They look forward like puz- 


ON SEEING THE BEST IN PEOPLE a 


zled children, baffled by the mystery of life. Day 
by day they perform the same old round of tire- 
some and monotonous duties, through long and 
harassing years of toil and anxiety. Many of them 
endure the weary ache of tedium and loneliness. 
And yet how bravely they stick it out, accepting 
life as it comes, without complaint or rebellion! 
And how honest people are! Some years ago a 
friend of mine published a series of books on the 
instalment principle. You paid sixty cents, re- 
ceived at once a hundred books, and then remitted 
the balance month by month. You would expect, 
of course, that a great many people would default. 
The publisher thought so, too, and was careful 
enough to take out an insurance. But he need not 
have worried—the losses were infinitesimal, and 
when he arranged another series he dispensed with 
the insurance altogether. He had discovered that 
nearly everybody is honest. 

A London magistrate has even put in a good 
word for criminals. He says that in all his years 
of experience he has only known one case of the 
robbery of a blind man. Mr. J. A. R. Cairns, 
magistrate at the Thames Police Court, in London, 
who sees, day by day, the most sordid side of life, 
yet finds “those latent splendors that impelled 
Christ to call men the children of God.” He tells 
a good story of two neighbors who appeared in a 
police court, one in the dock, the other in the 
witness-box. The complainant was painfully dis- 


38 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


figured, had lost several teeth, and had obviously 
been roughly handled. The injured man was asked 
if he wanted his neighbor sent to jail; and his reply 
was a very emphatic negative. This startled and 
astonished the defendant, who looked across the 
court at the man he had used so badly, and ex- 
pressed his bitter shame and remorse that he should 
ever have indulged in such a cowardly attack. The 
two men went home together on the best of terms. 

There are people, of course, with whom you can 
apparently do nothing, and you are tempted to let 
them alone. They seem to have such cold, hard, 
inaccessible hearts. They wear a mask of frozen 
indifference. Sometimes they seem to have a cash 
register where their hearts ought to be. They are 
bleak, wooden, neutral, inhospitable. What can 
we do about these sombre, taciturn people? We 
can remember that what seems like coldness may 
be nothing but shyness or lack of physical vitality, 
and that what looks like hardness may be only a 
natural reticence very difficult to overcome. We 
can remember that human nature, although ca- 
pricious, perverse and stubborn, is still capable of 
rich expansions and astounding transformations. 
The dry bones may yet live. 

If we try to see the best in people, we shall 
regard them as sons of God, and not as mere hands 
to be assessed only for their exploitable value. 
This will make us sensitive to human suffering, and 
give us a genuine passion for social justice. We 


ON SEEING THE BEST IN PEOPLE a0 


shall begin to see that with the poor and disin- 
herited the good never gets a fair chance because 
of their unfavorable environment and degrading 
conditions. We shall want to secure for them 
larger opportunities and a more spacious life. 
Thus a love of our brethren will bring about the 
truest progress. It will make short work of arro- 
gant nationalism and stiff-necked divisiveness, and 
will promote a radiant, world-wide brotherhood. 
Shall I be misunderstood if I say that we ought 
to see the best in ourselves? We can never do 
anything until we think we can do it. The psycho- 
analyst attributes certain failures in character to 
an “inferiority complex.” Mark Rutherford was 
not far wrong when he invented a new beatitude: 
‘‘ Blessed be those who heal us of our self- 
despisings.”’ You cannot expect a man to become 
boisterously healthy if you tell him he has one foot 
in the grave. A moral failure whose life had been 
redeemed said of the man who had helped him to 
regain his self-respect: ‘‘ The way he talks you’d 
think you was as good as him.” Have you never 
‘seen a child, who has been congratulated on grow- 
ing into “ quite a little woman,” draw herself up 
to her full height and silently register a vow that 
she will (for the present at least) behave like one? 
George Bernard Shaw, in one of his plays, shows 
us that when a London flower-girl is taken away 
from her street corner and treated like a lady she 
straightway sets to work to become one. A man 


ee ee ee 
40 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


who has once seen Christ and felt His healing, 
strengthening touch is amazed to find in himself 
unexpected powers of endurance and undreamed-of 
resources, so that, in humility and gratitude, he can 
say: “I did not know it was in me.” 

If you ever suffer.from any disquieting doubts as 
to whether, after all, you are really a Christian, 
you can easily settle the question by watching your 
attitude to the people around you. “We know 
that we have passed from death unto life, because 
we love the brethren.” And when, instead of look- 
ing for the best in people, we suspect the worst in 
them, and criticize their defects with devouring 
harshness, Jesus says, rather sharply for Him: 
“ What is that to thee? Follow thou Me.” 


IV 


ON KEEPING UP APPEARANCES 


“When a grocer sells you a barrel of apples 
you find his reputation at the top of the barrel, 
but when you work down a bit you discover his 
character.’—JoHN McNEILL. 


IV 
ON KEEPING UP APPEARANCES 


[™\T is not surprising that we can practise 
&\ hypocrisy before a deluded world, eas- 
Yi, ily taken in by a shrill and fussy ef- 

1 Ee fusiveness, but the astonishing thing is 
that we can humbug ourselves. We may experi- 
ence an occasional stab of uneasiness, but by moral 
dope and window-dressing we make a fair show, 
and go on. It is pretence that keeps us from find- 
ing the spiritual realities and achieving an inner 
integrity. We pretend that all is well with us; that 
we are at least as good as other people, or as good 
as our adverse circumstances will allow, and that 
we can successfully manage our own lives and keep 
up a decent average of self-respect. We apply a 
coating of piety just as a fashionable woman uses 
rouge or powder puff over sallowed and wrinkled 
skin. There is outward show with inward empti- 
ness. We wear a smooth and plausible mask and 
try to hide dull insipidity behind a shallow and 
mocking vivacity. But superficial piety, enamelled 
with icy conventions, painted to look new and real, 
brings no genuine satisfaction. There can be no 
happiness in religious life that is only skin deep. 
A pious gesture will not take the place of concrete 
conduct. We may deceive ourselves and our fel- 


43 





ee a Ee 
44 STANDING UP. TO LIFE 


lows; we may even take in the Church, but we 
cannot for a moment bluff God. He sees through 
the cheap, sleek, plausible imitation. “ There is 
nothing covered that shall not be revealed, and hid 
that shall not be known.” So it is not much use 
trying to keep up appearances. 

There is such a thing as moral dandyism—spick 
and span, immaculate, shining with self-conscious 
virtue—and nothing is more intolerably exasper- 
ating and repulsive. The creature of kid-gloved 
piety, with a home-made halo over a sneering face, 
who is unmoved by the suffering of the world, who 
turns away from the ugly bleeding wounds of hu- 
manity, and is never hurt by other people’s pains, 
who, wrapped up comfortably in cotton-wool, sim- 
ply does not want to know about the festering 
vices and offensive habits of the disagreeable people 
outside—here is a spiritual disease that only God 
can cure. Nothing but the searching fire of 
Christ’s moral purity can burn our smug self- 
contentment into deep self-abasement, our painted 
pride into sincere penitence. 

All life is honeycombed with the silly Neiitardlae 
of keeping up appearances. The world boasts of 
its mighty achievements, its increasing knowledge, 
its amazing discoveries, yet all the time it is beset 
by paralyzing fears—fear of famine, war, revolu- 
tion, death. Man has developed the world, but he 
fails strangely to manage himself. We swagger, 
but we’re scared. We have seen a politician go to 





ON KEEPING UP APPEARANCES 45 


some European Conference which was futile and 
settled nothing, return and boast that his efforts 
were entirely successful—but all the same there 
will be another conference later on. We have 
heard a Prime Minister, accused of saying some- 
thing a year previously which was the exact op- 
posite of what he was saying now, smilingly 
retort: “ That was bluff.” In war-time a crushing 
defeat is called “retirement according to plan” 
and ‘“‘ economic pressure ”’ is the pretty phrase used 
to describe the deliberate starvation of women and 
children. We show visitors the rich and beautiful 
things in a city, but we hide the squalor and beg- 
gary. We glory in the sumptuous luxury of ornate 
buildings, magnificent shops and swift and shining 
motor cars, but we say nothing about the sinister 
streets and dingy slums a few yards away. I often 
wonder what the pale, stunted, over-driven workers 
think when they walk down Piccadilly or Fifth 
Avenue? They themselves are industrious and 
thrifty—God knows they have to be—and they 
gain nothing but a precarious struggle. These 
other people—“ our betters! ”—are idle and ex- 
travagant and they have everything. 

Probably the most wonderful building in New 
York—that amazing city of towering palaces—is 
the Pennsylvania Station. Dignified and spacious 
and immaculate, with lofty roof and stately col- 
umns of Roman marble, the visitor who enters 
it for the first time is amazed by its bewilder- 


46 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


ing vastness and almost imagines himself in a 
cathedral. Certainly it is the most wonderful rail- 
way station in the world, but when all is said and 
done it is only a railway station! There is no need 
to keep up appearances at the Metropolitan Mu- 
seum of Art. It is the inner treasure that counts. 
The time will come when we can bluff no longer, 
and it will be a relief when the game is up, for 
shamming is a very fatiguing business. I remem- 
ber, many years ago, a weekly paper in London 
that was plastered all over week after week with 
the announcement that it had a bigger sale than 
any of its rivals. For months this proud boast was 
printed in large type on almost every page. All at 
once it ceased, and I asked a member of the staff 
why it had been dropped. ‘‘ Why,” he replied, 
“we've got the biggest sale now.” There is no 
need to keep up appearances when you have the 
real thing. You don’t put wallpaper over marble 
or throw scent on a rose. When you find the 
Truth it makes you free. Christ, who zs the Truth, 
pricks every pretty bubble and punctures every 
showy pretence. You cannot cheat Him with 
shams. What if He should have to say at the end 
that we were “ whited sepulchres ”’? We had bet- 
ter face the facts of life, deal with the ultimate 
realities, and find out whether, after all, we are 
only spiritual fakes, counterfeit Christians, stucco 
saints. We should have a horror and dread of 
making a great show and then fizzling out like a 


ON KEEPING UP APPEARANCES 47 


spent rocket. “The man who refuses to face 
facts,” said Marcus Dods, “ does not believe in 
God.” “I am seeking only to face realities,” said 


Woodrow Wilson, “ and to face them without soft 
concealment.”? Come down to bed-rock, be sincere 
with yourself, avoid vague and crooked thinking, 
choose the things that endure, don’t flounder or 
funk. Stand up to Life! 

There are, of course, people who keep up appear- 
ances, who are the very salt of the earth—the 
woman who pretends that her marriage is a shining 
success when her husband has appalling intervals 
of besotted drunkenness; the man who never utters 
a word of criticism about his wife although his soul 
is starving for love and his life is barren of com- 
radeship; the people who are cramped and tortured 
by poverty but refuse help and gaily protest that 
everything is all right; the dear old mother who 
scrapes and saves and sacrifices her comfort in 
order that she may pay the debts of her weak, idle, 
foolish boy and then boasts of what a comfort he 
is to her in her old age. There are the coura- 
geous souls who are gay while suffering a physical 
martyrdom, who hide their troubles and present a 
brave front to the world while their hearts are 
breaking, who can laugh when their backs are to 
the wall. Smiling, patient, uncomplaining, they 
endure their sufferings in unflinching silence. It 
is a magnificent bluff, a holy pretence, a piece of 
heroic hypocrisy that must set the angels singing! 





V 


ON HAVING A SENSE OF HUMOR 












“ Laughter—one of the most precious of God’s 
gifts; the very salt, the very light, the very rede 
air of life; the divine disinfectant, the hee 
purge.’—Tur AutHor or “ ELIZABETH AND HER — 
GERMAN GARDEN.” 


V 
ON HAVING A SENSE OF HUMOR 


2s SENSE of humor is not the mere ability 
Secy/s) Vek to see a joke and smile at it. It is quite 


\Y) different from the forced gaiety of 
g aD pleasure seekers or the brittle, metallic 
laughter of the worldly, or the indiscriminate rap- 
tures of the flapper. It is indeed a sane and sunny 
attitude to life. It enables you to see things in 
their true perspective, and to face difficulties with 
serenity. You cannot get bored and fed-up if you 
have the blessed gift of humor. It is the oxygen of 
life. Emerson says it is the protection of the over- 
driven brain against rancor and insanity. It brings 
refreshment, exhilaration, hope. It reinforces the 
fatigued spirit. It can dramatize the trivial and 
take the rough edge off necessary severities. It can 
catch a hint of spring even when there is snow on 
the ground, which means that it is not without 
spiritual vision. 

There are times when a sense of humor may be 
our salvation. For we all come upon an occasional 
period—a sort of black patch in life—when every 
conceivable thing goes disastrously wrong. We ex- 
perience a weary succession of failures and acci- 


51 





ne 
52 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


dents and misfortunes. The golfer who has been 
achieving fair success by strict attention and con- 
stant practice is suddenly stripped of his skill, and 
for a time can do nothing right. The artist or the 
writer comes upon an oppressive period of dullness 
and sterility, under the influence of which he is con- 
vinced that his career is over. Now the man with 
a morbid and unhealthy mind will sink into a 
devastating depression under such an infliction, but 
not so the man with a sense of humor. He will 
greet misfortune with a laugh and face the black 
patch with a cheer and go straight on until things 
take a turn—as they always do. 

The chief cause of unhappiness in marriage is the 
absence of any sense of humor in one or both of the 
partners. Two people who can laugh together and 
laugh at the same things will never fall out very 
seriously, because they will never be very serious 
about falling out. I once knew a newly-married 
man who, when his wife took two pieces of bread 
and butter, smilingly whispered “ Pig! ” She flew 
out of the room exclaiming that in all her life no 
one had ever called her a pig before, and that was 
the last remark she made to her unhappy husband 
for a whole week. 

If everybody had a sense of humor we should be 
able to rejoice in a new and brighter world. It 
would help to save us from war, for a withering 
breath of ridicule is, perhaps, the best remedy for 
swashbuckling militarism. It might rid the Church 


ON HAVING A SENSE OF HUMOR a8 


of ritualism with its fantastic costumes and ridicu- 
lous posturings. Does a clergyman really know 
what he looks like when he is dressed up in a cope? 
It would certainly cure us of the jarring habit of 
grumbling and rid us of the people whom St. John 
Ervine calls ‘ professional humilitarians.” Sir 
Hall Caine once said to me, in talking of some com- 
plaining letter he had received concerning one of 
his books, that “‘ only discontent is vocal.”. We are 
very frugal with our praise. In certain stores and 
restaurants you are asked to report any incivility 
on the part of the staff, but I came across a much 
better method in the dining car of the Congres- 
sional Limited. On the menu I found this notice: 
‘“‘ Passengers are requested to report any unusual 
service or attention on the part of employees. This 
enables us to recognize the exceptional efficiency 
which we wish to encourage in our service.” A 
sense of humor might give people a distaste for 
social antics and the tawdry pageant of the ball- 
room. It would do much to promote health and 
longevity, for the man who is peeved and rattled by 
every trifling trouble and every passing disappoint- 
ment, is never very well. And the modern fuss 
over sex would surely be disinfected and dispersed 
by a healthy sense of humor. 

Some people have a terror of being left alone 
with their thoughts—which proves conclusively 
that they have no sense of humor. If they had this 
great gift they would not depend on other people to 


[SOU CRU Ua EASES PR Manu LM SO 
54 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


amuse them—almost anything, even a temporary 
inconvenience or a stupid mistake, would be enough 
to set them grinning. Do you suppose that Ram- 
say Macdonald, England’s first Labor Premier, did 
not enjoy himself hilariously when he heard of 
his solemn expulsion from a Scotch golf club? 
Nothing funnier than that could happen in the 
most comical farce. 


“ Some things are of that nature as to make 
One’s fancy chuckle while his heart doth ache.” 


For instance, to see a bishop blessing war 
banners! 

There is a great man living today who was con- 
verted by a sense of humor in a preacher. Dr. 
Grenfell, the hero of Labrador, when a medical 
student in London, noticed a huge tent crowded 
with people, and out of curiosity went in. A stupid 
person was praying at interminable length, and say- 
ing nothing, when D. L. Moody, who was conduct- 
ing the service, rose and said, “ While our friend is 
finishing his prayer we will sing a hymn.” “ Here 
is a man worth watching,” said Grenfell, “‘ a Chris- 
tian with a sense of humor.” And he not only 
watched D. L. Moody, but listened to his invigor- 
ating message and afterwards won his loyal and > 
inspiring friendship, and the converted Grenfell 
went to Labrador and made history there. 

It must be rather difficult for a man to be a 


ON HAVING A SENSE OF HUMOR ope 


Christian if he has no sense of humor, for the 
Christian has to meet bleak, flinty, hostile people 
and be kind to them, and he will not be able to do 
this very long unless he can clear the air with 
laughter. He will also encounter mawkishness and 
unctuousness, and what will he do then if he has no 
glimmer of humor? Moreover, it is deadening cus- 
toms, monotonous grooves and decorous conven- 
tions that stifle religion. Let Christ speak for 
Himself and you have flaming ideas and sunny 
audacity. Humor has a certain cleansing quality. 
It is like a fresh breeze blowing through the mind, 
scattering the fumes of greed and dispersing the 
dust of hate. It is also a very useful corrective of 
the hard, business-like puritanism which exalts 
diligence and thrift as the loftiest virtues and glori- 
fies pushfulness and material prosperity. I have 
known cold-blooded, close-fisted, tough-hearted, 
hard-hitting financiers and industrialists—stubborn 
soldiers in a savage conflict—and they were nearly 
always deadly serious persons with no twinkle in 
the eye and no blithe merriment in the heart. One 
of them did chuckle once, but it was over a smart 
deal that was more frightening than funny. In the 
light of the simple, playful, penetrating humor of 
the New Testament the fretful struggle for wealth 
looks rather foolish. 

As a matter of fact there is no gaiety so 
sparkling and spontaneous as the gaiety of the 
saint. Jesus had a sharp, shining sense of humor 


EE EES 
56 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


which is revealed in His patience with exasper- 
ating people and His generous understanding of 
faulty human nature. Mr. A. G. Gardiner, writ- 
ing about a politician, says: “He is evidently a 
true Christian who loves to turn the other cheek 
to the smiter. Or-perhaps it is only that he en- 
joys a joke.” But suppose it is both? Suppose 
a man strikes you on one cheek and you turn the 
other one to him and say: “‘ You haven’t done your 
silly job very efficiently; I’ve got two cheeks and 
you’ve only hit one.” Don’t you suppose he would 
apologize for striking you at all? It would be a 
joke—and something more. Is it irreverent to say 
that it can be great fun being a Christian? Roose- 
velt said that fighting for the right was the finest 
sport in the world. We have made religion drab 
and dowdy—a well-known writer declares we have 
made it “a thing of solemn duties, magical cere- 
monials and terrifying eschatologies.” Yet the 
Christian life is love and joy and freedom, an ex- 
hilarating and transforming experience. It can be 
a very merry adventure, a radiantly jolly business. 
Perhaps after all it is only the real Christian who is 
merciful, forgiving, free of the entanglements of 
possessions and the pompous folly of pride, who 
can afford to laugh at all. 


VI 


ON TAKING FRESH COURAGE 


“TI often wonder why God is so fond of our 
being children. I think God likes us to be a little 
bit afraid of Life, as children in the dark, you 
know; I think He wants us to stretch out for 
somebody's hand in Life.’—LAuRENCE MEYNELL 
IN “ MOCKBEGGAR.” 


“No man has more wholly outlived life than 
I, And still it is good fun.’—Ropert Louis 
STEVENSON. 


“So long as one does not despair, so long as 
one doesn’t look upon life bitterly, things work 
out fairly well in the end. Where there’s a will 
there’s a way.’—GEoRGE Moore. 


“ His defeats were not fatal: they were the 
evidences of his integrity.’-—G. BERNARD SHAW 
on H. W. MAssINcHaAM. 


VI 
ON TAKING FRESH COURAGE 


>PVNOMETIMES a man is jerked with dis- 
#5) concerting abruptness out of his tran- 
\\ YG quil life, and at first the change looks 

ue) like unrelieved disaster. But when the 
crisis is faced with unflinching courage it leads to a 
richer, ampler life and more fruitful opportunities, 
and proves to be the very best thing that ever hap- 
pened to him. Sir William Robertson Nicoll was 
turned out of his little church at Kelso, in Scotland, 
by a diseased lung, and told that he was not to 
preach again. It must have been a dark day when 
he set out for Switzerland—an invalid who had lost 
his job. But the affliction that forced him out of 
Kelso brought him to London to be one of the 
greatest journalists of his age. The story of Jona- 
than Brierley is very similar. Ill health drove this 
powerful and winning preacher out of his pulpit, 
only to make him an author of world-wide in- 
fluence and reputation. Things are never quite as 
bad as they look, and most of the catastrophes we 
dread never happen, and when the blow does fall 
and darkness descends on us there are usually 
wonderful compensations waiting for us just round 


39 





ERT ———E—E—EeEEE——————————————————= 
60 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


the corner. It is indeed morally invigorating to 
be up against something most of the time. It pre- 
vents ennui and world weariness and debilitating 
complacency. 

Perhaps the most subtle temptation which afflicts 
earnest, Christian people in these days is the tend- 
ency to grow weary in well-doing, to give up in 
despair and let things slide. During the last ten 
years civilization has collapsed, faith has decayed, 
moral standards have been lowered, the world has 
been torn by soul-withering strife and lacerating 
hates, and has become a scene of tumult and con- 
fusion. And the temptation is to think that things 
are so hopelessly wrong that it is not a bit of good 
trying to put them right. We are inclined to say: 
“ Very well, we warned you as to what would hap- 
pen, we made our protest and suffered for making 
it, we tried to free you from demoralizing entangle- 
ments and you only hugged your chains, now we 
can do nothing more than retire into sullen silence 
and let things rip.” That attitude may be very 
human, but no one can suggest that it is Christian. 
For paralyzing despondency may be blank atheism. 
We must conquer chagrin and disheartenment and 
chafing disappointment and resist all temptation to 
retreat. The superstructure we have built is ad- 
mittedly rotten, but ‘‘ nevertheless, the foundation 
of God standeth sure.” Lack of courage means the 
most helpless impotence. So if we are to build 
again and build better we must somehow get fresh 


rr 
ON TAKING FRESH COURAGE 61 


courage, and I know of no way of doing this except 
by a strong, dynamic faith in God. Why are some 
people so desperately afraid of being hopeful? 
After all, our fears are just as likely to mislead us 
as our hopes. Tenacity is a great quality for dark 
days, and we have at least achieved something if we 
can manage to hold on. We have always a little 
more power of resistance than we think. If we 
hold on long enough we shall win through—twisted 
and strained and nearly finished at the end, no 
doubt, but by God’s grace we will not whine or be 
faint-hearted; we will face up to the hard knocks 
of life without squealing; we will run up the flag to 
the top of the mast and keep it flying there. 

I remember lunching in a London club one Sun- 
day with a well-known minister who was in sad 
trouble, very unwell and thoroughly tired—and yet 
that morning he had preached one of the most 
searching and inspiring sermons I had ever heard. 
I laughingly remarked that he always preached 
best when things were at their worst. He looked at 
me and said, very quietly: “ We get help.” Ihave 
never forgotten those three words. I have some- 
times thought them worth printing as a motto to 
hang on the wall as a rebuke to our fears and a 
challenge to our faith. For there is the secret of 
everything. How do we keep going? How have 
we avoided moral shipwreck? How do ye escape 
from the enticements that dazzle us and draw us to 
the very edge of the precipice? Why do we not go 





62 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


to pieces? My friend gave the only answer. We 
get help. ‘‘Somehow,” Bishop King, of Lincoln, 
used to say, ‘‘ somehow we are preserved.” Christ 
can cure our misery and dejection and mental dis- 
turbances. He alone can give us reinforced vitality 
and the courage to go on. He brings us a consola- 
tion that is creative, enriching, energizing. He © 
brings courage and adventure and romance into 
lives that are empty, dingy, imprisoned. He cures 
the ache and fever of our restless, anchorless 
hearts. And when we are depressed by failure, dis- 
figured by sin—when life is nothing but a rotting 
tangle—let us at least remember that we have in us 
an insatiable craving for God and a capacity for 
finding Him. And the most prodigal of sons may 
yet know the Father’s prodigal love. 


“ Strange that we creatures of the petty ways, 

Poor prisoners behind these fleshly bars; 
Can sometimes think us thoughts with God ablaze, 

Touching the fringes of the outer stars.” 


Dr. John Watson (better known, perhaps, as 
Tan Maclaren) used to tell a story of a Liverpool 
merchant who, through no fault of his own, failed 
in business and came down with a crash from pros- 
perity to poverty. When Dr. Watson called to 
offer sympathy and assistance he found his friend 
in the depths of despair. ‘‘ Everything has gone,” 
he moaned, ‘‘I have lost everything.” ‘‘ That’s 
bad.” said Dr. Watson. ‘So you’ve lost your repu- 


ON TAKING FRESH COURAGE 63 


tation.” ‘‘ No, thank God,” said the man rather 
indignantly, “my name and reputation are unsul- 
lied.” “Then your wife has left you,” suggested 
Dr. Watson. ‘“ My wife,” cried his friend, his eyes 
blazing with anger, “my wife is an angel—loyal 
and kind and true. She has stood by unflinch- 
ingly.” ‘I see,” said Dr. Watson, “then your 
children have turned their backs on you.” “I 
never seemed to know my children,” said the 
man, ‘until this happened. They have been so 
brave and tender and sympathetic—TI can’t tell you 
all they mean to me just now.” ‘ My dear old 
fellow,’ said Dr. Watson, “ you told me you had 
lost everything. The fact is you’ve lost nothing 
except a bagful of gold which doesn’t matter. 
Love, loyalty, comradeship—all the really impor- 
tant things—are yours still. Cheer up and don’t 
be a fool.” 

_ Never be afraid of being unhappy. Happiness 
is very wonderful, but we must have the courage to 
live without it. ‘‘ He was unhappy,” says Conrad, 
‘in a way unknown to mediocre souls.” Refuse 
to be hypnotized by failure. I do not think any 
Christian man is ever quite certain that circum- 
stances will not overcome him, but he is perfectly 
certain that if they do they can only win a tem- 
porary victory. It will be a merely trivial interrup- 
tion. The highest courage is not the courage that 
faces uncertain adventures—that may be little 
more than a flaming insolence—but the courage 


re 
64 STANDING UP TO LIFE 





that endures certain loss and limitation, inspired by 
faith in the ultimate triumph of spiritual realities. 
We are storm-beaten exiles, but the light shines 
through the darkness, revealing a life unchained 
and unclouded. 


VII 


Gn 


ads 


Yi 


“Can anyone be said to be ridiculous if he 
knows that he is ridiculous? Not very well. It 
is the pompous that are truly ridiculous.” 

—GrorcE Moore. 


“T do the very best I know how—the very best 

I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. 

If the end brings me out all right, what is said 

against me wont come to anything; if the end 

brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was 
right would make no difference.” 

—ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 


“He who imagines he can do without the 
world deceives himself much; but he who fancies 
the world cannot do without him is under still 
greater deception.” 


VII 
ON TAKING ONESELF TOO SERIOUSLY 


B() (ORYNSATIABLE vanity is always rather 
peg KE a ridiculous and is easily fooled. Tragic 
f= about trifles, fretting over minor ail- 

: Jen ments, worrying about reputation— 
self- me Ree all the joy of life by its swelling 
self-importance. There is a well-known university 
professor of whom it is said that he is the only man 
who can strut sitting down. I have an uncomfort- 
able feeling that there are others. The man who 
takes himself too seriously is always in danger of 
becoming a dehumanized prig. The worst of it is 
that the victims of inflated conceit are seldom the 
people who have any right to admire themselves. 
The purser on a ship may be rather high and 
mighty, but the commander is diffident and modest. 
A railroad ticket-taker is apt to be a bit fussy, but 
you never heard of a locomotive engineer taking 
himself very seriously. And if anybody in church 
is self-important it is not the preacher, but the 
usher. Unfortunately the man who takes him- 
self too seriously seldom knows what a fool he is, 
for conceit is completely blinding. And we some- 
times encourage him, for we have a way of calling 


67 





ne ee 
68 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


a man statesmanlike when he is only pompous and 
reserved, and we put him on committees where he 
does nothing but look wise, waste time and block 
progress. | 

The man who takes himself too seriously may be 
a slight affliction to his friends, but this is nothing 
to the cheerless existence he inflicts on himself. 
He is so literal and solemn, so smug and precise, so 
desperately set on getting somewhere that he can- 
not stay to sing or laugh or joke. Such a character 
is described in A Hind Let Loose, by C. E. Mon- 
tague. ‘All life for him was a taking of means to 
ends; means that to him had no worth but as ways 
to their ends; ends that were nothing but termini 
for means, means he could not smell as flowers, to 
ends he could not taste as fruit.” Preposterous, 
heavy-footed persons who take themselves too seri- 
ously may be found in all classes, trades and pro- 
fessions, but they seem to grow rather thickly 
amongst schoolmasters, vegetarians, archdeacons, 
plumbers and philatelists. Journalists would no 
doubt succumb to the disease but for the fact that 
they never know when a new proprietor is coming 
round the corner to throw them into the gutter— 
and that helps to keep them humble and unworldly. 
They seldom lose their heads because they are 
always in danger of losing their jobs. 

Sometimes a cure is possible. A smashing dis- 
appointment, a humiliating failure, a spell of weak- 
ness and ill-health, a swift and sudden temptation 


ON TAKING ONESELF TOO SERIOUSLY 69 


which reveals unsuspected moral weakness and 
spiritual peril, the sight of old comrades stealing 
quietly away, bored by pretentious talk—in some 
such way pride may be punctured with some hope 
of a recovery of modesty and reticence. It will do 
us no harm to practise an exacting scrutiny of our 
motives, our unguarded thoughts, our careless acts. 
And when we detect in ourselves silly conceit and 
childish petulance we ought to go into some obscure 
corner and weep and pray over our folly. Silence 
and repose and contemplation may give the mind 
time to recover its sanity. 

The true saint is full of divine discontent and 
never thinks he is doing anything beyond marking 
time. Heis humble and self-effacing and he has no 
hope except in the wonderful grace of God. Con- 
sequently his unconscious goodness is a powerful 
and winsome influence that draws men to God. 
Nothing is more repulsive than conscious goodness. 
I think it is Chesterton who says that a man may 
be proud of his house and his money and very little 
harm is done, but it is quite fatal for him to be 
proud of his goodness. “ Only by bowing down 
before the higher,” said Carlyle, “‘does man feel 
himself exalted.” It is quite worth while to take 
some trouble to understand yourself. You have 
got to live with yourself in rather close companion- 
ship—you may as well get: acquainted with the 
strange, unruly being from whom you cannot es- 
cape. Face your own character in a mood of 


70 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


searching criticism and explore all the dark cor- 
ners. You will have curious revelations and 
some rather nauseating revulsions. But you will 
henceforth be in little danger of arrogance and 
pomposity. 

It is a common thing today for young men and 
women who have been brought up in Christian 
homes and are living clean, useful, Christian lives, 
to meet with distaste and reluctance any invitation 
to join the Church. I think in some cases this is 
due to the mischievous teaching of certain Evangel- 
ists who have given the impression that conversion 
is something convulsive and catastrophic. Are we 
taking ourselves rather too seriously when we wait 
for such an overwhelming and explosive experi- 
ence? I have known men timid yet trustful, whose 
piety was perfectly natural and unaffected, who 
simply and quietly, by a firm act of the will, passed 
under the dominion of the Lord they loved, and 
although they could never state exactly when or 
where they were converted, no one who knew them 
ever had the slightest doubt about the fact itself. 
Charles T. Studd was once asked how he was con- 
verted, and he replied: “ I knelt down and thanked 
God for His forgiveness.” Lest this should seem 
too easy and simple it is fair to add that he went on 
saying “Thank you” with a completely conse- 
crated life. And I have wondered sometimes 
whether we are not taking ourselves too seriously 
when we expect some personal and individual assur- 


— 
ON TAKING ONESELF TOO SERIOUSLY 71 


ance of salvation. Have we any right to ask for 
anything of the sort? Christ’s redemption is racial 
and embraces everybody. He loves the world and 
has died to save it; we are in the world, therefore 
He loves us and has died to save us. Can we want 
anything better than that? Is it not enough, in- 
deed, to fill us with exultant rapture? Whether I 
accept the salvation He offers is for me to decide 
and the choice is a matter of life and death. 

And once more I ask if I am not taking myself 
too seriously when I turn simple matters of taste 
into serious moral issues. Is it possible that a man 
is fussily creating artificial sins when he thinks that 
God is going to be frightfully angry with him if he 
smokes a pipe or goes to see a good play? I can 
imagine that God may be intensely hurt when we 
are unjust or unkind; I think it must rend His 
heart to see His children on the battlefield tearing 
at each other’s throats, and He must often wonder 
whether we really love Him when we allow our 
brothers to live in crowded hovels amid the dumb 
misery of mean streets while we enjoy privacy and 
comfort. But He is not a frigid, obdurate, easily 
offended Deity curbing youthful audacities with 
solemn inhibitions or suppressing happy innocent 
fun, or frowning on durable satisfactions. 

There is one place where we realize our impor- 
tance and lose our self-importance, and that is 
when we kneel before the Cross of Christ. Dr. 
Denney used to say that he sometimes wished he 


iz STANDING UP TO LIFE 


could have a crucifix in his pulpit so that he could 
point to it and say to his hearers: ‘‘ That is how 
God loves you.” We must have been of great im- 
portance to Jesus. But when we realize that we 
did that to Him, every rag of pretence and self- 
complacency falls away from us. 


VIII 


ON SPEAKING A WORD IN SEASON 


“ Every man is a missionary now and for ever, 
for good or for evil, whether he intends or de- 
signs it or not. He may be a blot, radiating out- 
ward to the very circumference of Society his 
dark influence; or he may be a blessing, spread- 
ing benediction over the length and breadth of 
the world; but a blank he cannot be.” 


—CHALMERS. 





VIII 
ON SPEAKING A WORD IN SEASON 


SHE ability to speak a word in season— 
rae that is, the word that warns and re- 
‘ strains, helps and comforts, strengthens 

'4 and reinforces—is largely a question of 
that elusive and indefinable quality that we call 
personality. For one man to go about speaking a 
word in season to his fellows is to become a dan- 
gerous and intolerable nuisance, for another it 
means a valuable and helpful ministry. I have 
been reading lately a book on Personality in the 
Making, by Professor J. H. Coffin, who believes 
that personality, “ the biggest fact in the universe,” 
is not a gift of the gods, but a possession to be 
acquired by purpose and effort and developed by 
conscious and intentional striving. He describes 
three classes of people as wanting, wholly or par- 
tially, in the “ Aaa attributes essential to 
personality in its true sense ’’—persons of defective 
intelligence who lack the sense of individual re- 
sponsibility and the ability to appreciate moral 
values, the criminal classes which, he explains, are 
made up not only of ordinary criminals, but also of 
“the high financiers and all others who live by 


75 





76 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


exploitation,” and inconsequential persons such as 
sportsmen and society butterflies, who lack pur- 
poses and standards and whose chief aim in life is 
to avoid serious enterprise and to have a good time. 
Outside of these three classes it 1s apparently pos- 
sible to develop sufficient personality to be able to 
influence and help other people. But I do not think 
it is given to all good people to engage in this work. 
It requires personal magnetism, the most delicate 
tact and a genuine gift of sympathy and imagina- 
tion. A vague, easy affability will not do. I have 
known people with nothing vital or compelling 
about them, people who are lively but not really 
alive, whose blundering efforts at personal dealing 
would do about as much good as (to quote a friend 
of mine) a lesson in swimming to a middle-aged 
goldfish. ‘“‘ Words from the teeth out,” says an 
American novelist, “ never saved anybody.” Those 
who try to be physicians of souls must have a rich 
spiritual experience of their own; they must have 
a subtle, irresistible charm that is altogether dis- 
arming, they must know how to minister to tor- 
tured minds and famished hearts, and while they 
must, in some cases, act with affectionate severity, 
they must never use the method of the cudgel and 
crowbar, and they must remember that there is 
nothing people resent more than impertinent kind- 
ness. ‘ Deep calleth unto deep,” says Dean Inge, 
‘and those whose hearts God has touched can find 
their way easily to the hearts of others.” 


ee RR EE ———————E———EEEeee 
ON SPEAKING A WORD IN SEASON (ve 


I think of two men whom I have known very 
intimately, who were glowing examples of vivid, 
electric, irresistible personality, and who were able 
to speak the word in season with extraordinary 
effectiveness and success. One was the late 
Charles M. Alexander, the other Dan Crawford. 
Once when I was crossing the Atlantic with Alex- 
ander, we had on board a hard, silent, petrified 
multi-millionaire with a face like a withered apple, 
who kept sternly to himself and looked intensely 
worried and miserable. So far as I could see, no 
one ever dared to speak to him. One day, when I 
was walking round the decks with Alexander, he 
suddenly exclaimed: “‘ Here’s old man How 
unhappy he looks. I’m going to talk to him.” 1 
fully expected that the rich old man would explode 
in his wrath and consign the evangelist to some 
very unpleasant place. But I had reckoned with- 
out Alexander’s gay challenge and sparkling, capti- 
vating smile. When I came round the deck again 
there was Alexander sitting on the arm of the mil- 
lionaire’s deck-chair, with his New Testament in 
his hand, and his eyes dancing with happiness, en- 
gaged in animated conversation, and the old man 
was listening with the keenness and interest of a 
boy who hears for the first time a thrilling adven- 
ture story. Alexander would talk about religion to 
the tailor who was measuring him for a suit of 
clothes, to haughty ladies of title or lonely servant 
girls, to railway guards and hotel waiters. He had 








78 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


a magnetic charm that enabled him to speak to 
anybody anywhere, and no one was ever offended. 
As to what permanent good he achieved by his 
platform efforts I am not prepared to offer an opin- 
ion, but I know that he had a genius for personal 
evangelism which arrested many a drifting will and 
aroused many a sleeping conscience. 

It was the same with Dan Crawford—that bril- 
liant, dazzling genius who, for the best part of his 
life, has buried himself in “the long grass” of 
Africa in order to preach the gospel to his beloved 
blacks. He once went down to Epsom on Derby 
day and, dressed quite as fashionably as any dash- 
ing sportsman on the course, wandered amongst the 
smartest people and drew several of them into con- 
versation about religion. There was a glamor 
about the man that you simply could not with- 
stand. Several times during a voyage to New York 
I missed Dan Crawford, and on searching for him, 
discovered that he was talking, intimately and 
seriously, with his little, red, New Testament in his 
hand, to a banker, or a chorus girl, or a steward. 
These men knew something of the subtle maladies 
‘of the soul, and they could help men to fight for a 
clean life in a hostile world. ‘They seemed to pos- 
sess inexhaustible vitality. You met them with 
radiant expectation and left them with a sense of 
elation. 

We may not be consummate masters of spiritual 
propaganda like these two remarkable men, but, as 


Re a 
ON SPEAKING A WORD IN SEASON i 


a matter of fact, we simply cannot avoid influenc- 
ing people either for good or evil. For all words 
have wings and happiness and depression are both 
infectious. We are either helping people or harm- 
ing them every day. An English novelist thinks 
we are probably responsible for the actions of 
strangers who pass us in the street. “A smile 
might turn away a man’s thoughts from suicide.” 
I remember once meeting a man in New York 
whom I hardly knew, and whom I had not seen for 
at least three years. He came up to me in a hotel, 
and greeting me very cordially said: “ You remem- 
ber our last meeting in Philadelphia? I was ter- 
ribly depressed that night—never mind why—but 
you cheered me up and sent me home singing.” 
Now I was not too exalted by this man’s gratitude 
—for this reason: I had no recollection whatever 
of the conversation to which he referred, and I 
found myself asking this embarrassing question: 
If I can cheer a man up and not know it, how often 
have I unconsciously depressed and hurt people? 
We are all preachers and advertisers and evangel- 
ists, whether we like it or not. The success of a 
novel is not made by reviews, but by the people 
who persist in talking about it. The rise of the 
British Labor Party is certainly not due to money 
or strategy, or the influence of the press—it is the 
work of a mighty volunteer army of propagandists 
who, at street corners and in workshops, on rail- 
roads and street cars talk, talk, talk, and spread the 





80 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


truth and make converts all the time. Woodrow 
Wilson is not remembered today for his executive 
ability, but for his flaming words. His greatest 
deeds were words. Sitting at his typewriter in the 
White House at Washington, he tapped out mes- 
sages that moved the world. 

If we only knew it, we might talk to almost any- 
body about religion and find them responsive. In 
many cases they are expectantly and eagerly wait- 
ing for us to introduce the subject. An English 
clergyman once told me that when he was leaving 
his church in the country to come to London, he 
felt that there were a few people to whom he ought 
to speak personally about their spiritual life and 
about joining the Church. He was very shy 
about doing it, and was terribly afraid of being 
repulsed—indeed he would not have attempted it 
at all but for the fact that he was leaving. But in 
every case, to his intense surprise, he met with the 
same response: ‘‘ Why didn’t you talk to me about 
this before? I’ve been hoping for so long that you 
would give me an opportunity for a chat like this.” 

Two young ladies who belonged to a well-to-do 
family and enjoyed a comfortable home, felt called 
to social service, and with the support of a few 
friends they opened a well-equipped club and in- 
stitute for factory girls. They were Church mem- 
bers, but held very strongly that it would be unfair 
to introduce any religious activities, seeing that the 
members might belong to all kinds of churches and 


4," 





ON SPEAKING A WORD IN SEASON 81 


none. So the usual program was organized— 
music, games, dancing, cookery, dressmaking, and 
soon. One night, after the club had been proceed- 
ing successfully for nearly a year, a deputation 
from the members came to see the two young ladies 
who had started and managed it. They expressed 
their gratitude for all the comradeship they had 
enjoyed, for the classes, for the amusements. And 
then, looking very self-conscious and ill-at-ease, 
they seemed unable to get any farther. “Of 
course,” said a member of the deputation bolder 
than the rest but still very shy, “ we appreciate all 
you’ve done for us—it’s very nice to be able to 
come here every night, and we’re all very happy— 
but—but we were wondering whether now and then 
you would tell us something about Jesus.” The two 
founders of the club were dumb with astonishment! 
They had been so certain that religion was the one 
thing these girls would never stand—and if they 
meant conventional and organized religion, they 
may have been right. But this little group of 
factory girls, like thousands of other questioning, 
protesting, spiritually homesick young people, were 
hungry to hear about Jesus. 


FN, t\;) { 
aE 
ian Ge 
H 


RY Leek 


fir 





IX 


ON SITTING LOOSELY TO THINGS 


“We look not at the things which are seen, but 
at the things which are not seen; for the things 
which are seen are temporal; but the things 
which are not seen are eternal.” 

—II Cortnturans 4:18. 


“They didn’t go very far,” said the girl. “I 
suppose people would have said they were fools 
to try. Perhaps they were bound to fail. I don’t 
know. Somehow that doesn’t seem to me to mat- 
ter. They tried to do something beautiful.” 
“That's success enough,” said the boy. “Yes,” 
said the girl, “it’s the only thing worth while.” 

“—HLOYD (DELS, 


Oh the night was dark, the night was late, 
And the robbers came to rob him; 

They picked the lock of his palace gate, 
Seized his jewels and gems of state, 

Fis coffers of gold and his priceless plate— 
The robbers that came to rob him. 

But loud laughed he in the morning red, 
For of what had the robbers robbed him? 

Fo! hidden safe as he slept in bed, 
When the robbers came to rob him, 

They robbed him not of a golden shred 

Of the radiant dreams in his wise old head— 

“And theyre welcome to all things else,’ he 

said, 

When the robbers came to rob him. 


IX 


ON SITTING LOOSELY TO THINGS 






$>N the most beautiful and least successful 
1 KEES of his plays, Mr. A. A. Milne describes 
oid \skap 

f ral Vex the early life of one of his characters 
BS eu up to a certain crisis and adds: “ Then 
success closed in upon him.’ It imprisoned and 
enslaved him, robbing him of his happy dreams 
and condemning him to flatness and oppression. 
It is the cold, calculating, clutching concentration 
that cheats and withers. I shall never forget the 
pitying scorn with which a wealthy stock-broker 
once denounced a partner who in one week had 
spent two afternoons and one evening listening to a 
symphony orchestra. When he might have been 
making money! I once knew a rich man who said 
he played golf once a week, not because he liked it 
—he frankly admitted that he loathed it—but only 
to keep himself fit for business. I always felt that 
he regarded conversation as a convenient vehicle 
for making bargains, when it ought to be the most 
joyous game in the world. We are all of us too 
much under the tyranny of the near and the 
tangible. We settle down and dig ourselves in. 
These are the real things, we say, houses, property, 


85 


86 STANDING UP (TO LIFE 


money; something you can put in a safe, something 
that means security, “this present world.” We 
grab what we want, and then discover that it 
crumbles in our hands. ‘‘ The chief end of man,” 
says the Scottish Shorter Catechism, “is to glorify 
God and enjoy Him for ever.” No merely mechan- 
ical and utilitarian existence can satisfy us. The 
sweating labor of factories and the pursuit and 
preservation of wealth has left us with very little 
capacity for joy. 

It is a great day for a man when he meets a new 
idea, and every now and then a man makes this 
startling discovery—that the things you can touch 
and handle and pay into banks are not of the great- 
est importance, simply because they are temporary 
and perishable, and in any case will soon have to 
be abandoned and left behind. In a few years we 
shall have done with these things, but the inner life 
to which we give little or no attention is all we 
shall have to face eternity with. Therefore I main- 
tain that it is only the unseen things that are really 
worth troubling about. Life is a very trivial thing 
if it has nothing in it that is enduring. It is just as 
well that we should submit our life to an unbiassed 
audit and discover the transiency of physical 
pleasure and the futility of selfish pride. The 
hectic indulgence in mechanical pleasures brings no 
healthy exuberance of spirits, but only weariness 
and discontent—sometimes it leads to mutinous 
defiance and shuddering despair. A friend of mine 


—— nT 
ON SITTING LOOSELY TO THINGS 87 


who sat watching a dance on an Atlantic liner 
asked: “‘ Why are the faces so sad when the move- 
ments are so gay?” I could understand people 
dancing if they were glad about something, but 
these people appeared to be solemnly toiling at an 
irksome task. Even vice, we are told, has the 
severest limitations and becomes excessively boring 
after atime. The wine is heady, but the dregs are 
bitter. As a matter of cold logic it cannot be very 
wise to give your life to what is perishing and 
ignore what is eternal. 

At the same time there is no need to turn your 
back upon the world in order to find God, for there 
is a ladder “ betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.” 
Christianity does not repress physical impulses, but 
redeems and sublimates them. The Christian 1s 
not to reject the world as something too alien and 
unclean for him to touch, he is not to despise it in a 
spirit of arrogant superiority, he must try to un- 
derstand it and face it with magnanimity, charity 
and courage. After all, Jesus loved the world and 
died to save it. Christianity is as much opposed to 
a fierce and cadaverous asceticism as it is to the 
pursuit of shabby successes and tawdry pleasures. 
The most worldly man I ever knew had never been 
inside a theatre, never smoked, and was a fiercely 
intolerant teetotaler, but he went greedily after 
what he wanted and grabbed it with brutal defiance 
of all competitors. | 

We must remember, too, that the Christian lives 





88 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


in an unfriendly world and ought to be constantly 
on his guard against egotism and animalism and 
the peril of enslavement to the world spirit. The 
world today believes that suffering is much worse 
than sin, and that comfort is more to be desired 
than character. It is covetous and lustful and un- 
comfortably fidgetty and feverish. Very few peo- 
ple could sit alone in a room for any length of time 
without the sedative of a cigarette or the irritant of 
a sensational newspaper. The trouble is, as an 
American writer puts it, that people cannot stand 
themselves. We must resist the pressure of the 
world and cultivate a certain unconquerableness of 
spirit. “She went about her work,” says an 
American novelist, “as if that were one thing—and 
then there were other things; as if she were in no 
danger of being swallowed up in her manner of 
living. There was something apart that was daunt- 
less.” If we are to avoid the tyranny of things it 
is wise at intervals to turn aside from our crowded 
and clamorous life and quietly bring our thoughts 
and occupations and habits under the searching 
rays of the Eternal Light. It will be well for us to 
“live the listening life,” sensitive to Heavenly in- 
fluences, alert to hear the voice of God. And when 
a pleasure or an ambition becomes so exacting and 
indispensable that you cannot give it up—give it 
up, just to show that you are master. 

One thing is certain: happiness is to be found in 
the service of men, never in their exploitation. For 


ON SITTING LOOSELY TO THINGS 89 


a man who has the capacity to find God to squander 
his life in chasing money is the bitterest of trage- 
dies. Whatever property he may secure, his moral 
estate is bankrupt. No man is ever quite so happy 
as when he is in love—and then he is not thinking 
about himself at all, but only of his loved one and 
how lavishly and unreservedly he can serve her. 

In one of his recent books, Mr. Kipling has an 
essay on the Victoria Cross. He says: “ The order 
itself is a personal decoration, and the honor and 
glory of it belong to the wearer; but he can only 
win it by forgetting himself, his own honor and 
glory, and by working for something beyond and 
outside and apart from his own self. And there 
seems to be no other way in which you get anything 
in this world worth the keeping.’ And ina volume 
of short stories by John Galsworthy I find this 
passage in “‘ The Hedonist ”: ‘‘ And suddenly there 
came before me two freaks of vision—Vaness’s 
well-dressed person, panting, pale, perplexed; and 
beside him the old darkey’s father, bound to the 
live-oak, with the bullets whistling past, and his 
face transfigured. There they stood alongside—the 
creed of pleasure . . . and the creed of love de- 
voted unto death! ‘Aha,’ I thought; ‘ which of 
the two laughs last?’ ”’ 

It is possible for a good mother and housewife to 
fall under the tyranny of things, to become the 
slave of household cares, to be always on tip-toe 
and nervously alert, wearing herself out in a 


90 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


pathetic attempt to attain an impossible efficiency, 
and all the time sacrificing unnecessarily her 
beauty, her love of music and books, her husband’s 
comradeship and her moral influence over her chil- 
dren. Her home is run with stiff, repulsive regu- 
larity, and its inmates are under the tyranny of an 
aggravating tidiness. The children behave per- 
fectly—but they are not really children. A great 
deal of nonsense has been talked about ‘“ Blessed 
be drudgery.” Unrelieved and distasteful drudg- 
ery means stunted minds and deadened hearts. 


A church may boast ambitious programs, ex- 
pensively equipped buildings, and well-run ma- 
chinery and yet be spiritually lifeless. “I can 
never understand,” once remarked an astute 
American, “ how Jesus of Nazareth accomplished 
so much without being on a committee.” Sir W. 
Robertson Nicoll once told me that his favorite 
church was a cold, uncomfortable, repulsively ugly 
building in an obscure street, where the singing 
was barely tolerable and the service long and se- 
verely simple. But the preaching! Before the 
preacher had been on his feet five minutes you 
were lifted to the heights and the dusty, draughty 
kennel of a place was flooded with heavenly light. 
I knew a man who had in his office the most elabo- 
rate card index system I have ever seen. But it 
did nothing and got nowhere, for there was no 
business to keep a record of. On the other hand, I 
once heard a great musical genius give a recital in 


De ne 
ON SITTING LOOSELY TO THINGS 91 


a little Welsh chapel, on a very inferior organ, 
which had nothing to recommend it but a row of 
gaudy pipes. The audience was spellbound by the 
heavenly music which came, not from the cheap 
little organ, but from the soul of the organist. I 
saw the regular organist sitting in a pew with a 
puzzled look in his eyes. He was wondering what 
had happened to his organ! 

Sometimes a man, immersed in the jangling cares 
and enervating pleasures of the world, sees a beck- 
oning light drawing him away from all material 
engrossments and sending him forth on a search 
for Truth and a quest for Life. Having seen the 
Light—the Light of the world—he follows the 
gleam, and knows the glow of a vision which 
changes everything. He is surprised to find him- 
self on a pilgrimage which leads to no worldly gain 
and no material advantage—but he has made the 
unreckoning venture of faith and has discovered 
that the secret of true living is not in possessions 
and self-gratification, but in love and service. He 
sees life from a new angle, and has a new method 
of estimating values. He begins to suspect that a 
bird in the bush may be worth two in the hand. 
The things that seemed so essential are becoming 
quite insignificant. When he opens his newspaper 
he finds the literary page much more fascinating 
than the financial columns. He has wider tastes 
and interests, vaster resources, a new zest for 
life. And the old scramble for wealth now looks 


D2 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


vulgar and silly. Old habits are broken, new 
ideas are born, he is conscious of unlocked en- 
ergies, and enduring satisfactions. Exalted en- 
thusiasms sweep through his soul like a fresh, 
life-giving breeze. The whole world belongs to 
him because he has stopped seeking it. He is 
now sitting very loosely to things, and is prepared 
to make any sacrifice in order to seize realities and 
lay hold of Truth; but he has already a rapturous 
sense of liberation and joy. All the barriers are 
down. The happy wayfarer has found his way 
home. He is starting on the process of moral and 
spiritual transformation which we call conversion. 


ENS 


ON RELIGION AND FRIENDSHIP 


“ One friend is enough to change the world.” 
—THeE AutHor or “ ELIZABETH AND HER 
GERMAN GARDEN.” 


“ She never found fault with you, never implied 
Your wrong by her right; yet man at her side 
Grew nobler, girls purer, and through the 

whole town 
The children were gladder that pulled at her 
gown,” 
—F. B. Brownine. 


“To love and be loved is the greatest happi- 
ness in existence... . It is not that a man has 
occasion to fall back upon the kindness of his 
friends. Perhaps he may never experience the 
necessity of doing so; but we are governed by 
our imaginations, and they stand there as a solid 
bulwark against all the evils of life.” 

—SYDNEY SMITH. 


x 


ON RELIGION AND FRIENDSHIP 








E> ©) ROBABLY the best definition of earthly 
| EZ BS bliss is “ four feet on a fender,” for 
‘“ aged friendship is the greatest blessing in 
GO ESSD life, just as loneliness is the darkest 
sorrow. Loneliness can be so devastating and un- 
bearable that it will lead emotional people into rash 
and foolish marriages, and weak people into wild 
alcoholic indulgence. The gnawing solitariness of 
a crowded city is almost unendurable, and in the 
isolation of a new country loneliness has sometimes 
led to madness and suicide. To the lonely, with no 
opportunity of self-expression, life becomes a thing 
of vague hungers and raging desires, enervating 
repressions and morbid imaginings—something in- 
complete, unsatisfying, insupportable. We hear 
much of the loneliness of old age, but sometimes a 
boy is the loneliest being in the world. He suffers 
the most acute and intolerable loneliness simply 
because nobody understands him. The most un- 
likely people confess to this feeling of isolation. It 
is not exclusively the experience of the solitary— 
very often it is the prosperous man, with crowds of 
acquaintances, who suddenly discovers the desola- 


95 


96 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


tion of loneliness. And it is certainly not confined 
to the unmarried. For an ill-matched couple can 
live together in such dreary separateness that they 
do not even speak the same language. Such 
starved and tortured souls may attempt a cold, 
steely self-mastery; but it is rather a dreadful 
remedy. Nothing can save the lonely except warm 
human companionship or the cleansing, inspiring 
friendship of Jesus. ‘‘ We are most of us very 
lonely in this world,’ said Thackeray. ‘“‘ You 
who have any who love you, cling to them and 
thank God.” 

I have said so much about the horrors of loneli- 
ness in order to show how great a thing friendship 
is. No one who has one good friend can be said to 
have failed in life, however unsuccessful he may 
have been in other directions. I have heard of a 
man who refused to move to a more attractive 
town, where he could have had a much more lucra- 
tive post, simply because in the rather dismal sub- 
urb in which he lived he had a friend. When 
there was a food-shortage in England during the 
War and women had to wait outside shops in long 
queues they were greatly pitied and much sym- 
pathy was expressed in the newspapers. As a mat- 
ter of fact most of the women thoroughly enjoyed 
the experience, because it brought them an unusual 
opportunity for comradeship. One night, coming 
out of church, a friend of mine stopped to speak to 
a dear old woman, who told him she had saved up 


ON RELIGION AND FRIENDSHIP od 


her money and was going on a day trip to the sea 
in a motor coach. ‘“ You will find it hot and tir- 
ing,” he said, ‘‘ and you’ve a long way to go to get 
the coach. I will tell you what [’ll do—I’ll lend 
you my automobile for the day and you can travel 
in comfort.” She thanked him with tears in her 
eyes for his consideration and kindness and then 
said: “‘ But if you don’t mind I’d rather go in the 
motor coach because you always meet nice people 
to talk to.” 

Your friend must never be a mere echo of your- 
self. It ought to be possible to tell the truth to a 
friend and to receive the truth from him. Flattery 
—always sickening and exasperating to decent 
people—is simply fatal to real friendship. As a 
rule, the man who has the firmest friends is the man 
who is by no means anxious for cheap and easy 
popularity. The joy of true comradeship is in 
being able to think aloud—to say even foolish and 
ill-considered things without being misunderstood. 
Apart from this, friendship is only a frail dream. 
Certainly you must be able to laugh together, and 
to laugh at the same things. Nothing divides peo- 
ple so much as their idea of humor. There is no 
room in friendship for the intolerable insolence of 
pity. Instead, there is a mutual sympathy and 
understanding, a glowing, radiant fellowship, a 
glorious partnership in the bearing of burdens 
and the facing of difficulties. We must not use 
the word “ friendship ” too carelessly. If a man 


a 
98 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


has two good friends, he is rich indeed. A man 
who thinks he has a dozen friends may well in- 
quire whether he has one. We ought to take care 
of our friendships, and I will tell you why. The 
bitterest thing in this world is disillusion. It is a 
wound that takes long to heal and often leaves ugly 
scars. And one shall ask him: What are these 
wounds in thine hands? And he shall answer: 
Those with which I was wounded in the house of 
my friends. When a friend fails you the world 
crashes. 

Friendship, sublimated by religion, is the only 
basis for a successful and durable marriage. With- 
out it, marriage soon ceases to be a romance and 
becomes merely a somewhat boring institution. 
The exhilarating audacity of a new adventure is 
lost in mutual criticism and irritation, ending in 
weariness, lassitude, perhaps in disaster. But what 
splendid satisfaction there may be in the comrade- 
ship of marriage—a free, generous, tolerant, under- 
standing friendship that never depends on the 
ecstasy of emotional abandon! “ Life,” said Sam- 
uel Butler, “is like playing a violin solo in public 
and learning the instrument as one goes on.” The 
wonder is, not that we make mistakes, but that we 
make so few. The very thought of carrying on this 
precarious business alone is paralyzing. Life is 
only made possible by friendship. Any inquiry 
into the forces that shape men’s lives will show the 
extraordinary effectiveness of personal influence. 


2 ee 
ON RELIGION AND FRIENDSHIP eb 


The selfless devotion of a mother, the steadfast 
loyalty of a wife, the moral reinforcement of a good 
man’s friendship—here are the potent forces that 
command the homage of the heart and awaken 
slumbering ideals into fruitful activity. 

And nothing but friendship can save a world 
morally fatigued after the drunkenness of War—a 
world haunted by fantastic fears, ravaged by gro- 
tesque hatreds, and torn by savage jealousies. 
“We are members one of another,” is not merely a 
vague philosophy or a beautiful religious doctrine 
—it is a simply inescapable economic fact, which 
the nations must accept or perish. Industrialism, 
although it has introduced much squalid suffering 
and appalling ugliness into life, has also brought 
about the solidarity of the world. The world is 
now one in its successes and defeats, and a catas- 
trophe in one country is a catastrophe for all. 
Above all the greed and treachery that darken the 
outlook today we see the solitary figure of Jesus 
calling the people to faith and love. Will they 
listen to Him, or will they once more allow govern- 
ments to settle petty differences by the suicidal 
stupidity of war? Surely we must come to see that 
there is nothing so weak as force, nothing so futile 
as repression, nothing so strong as love. Jesus 
alone has the secret that will save the world; and 
it is the secret of love. Love can bring back 
laughter and freedom and youth to a world torn 
and strangled by the indecent insanity of organ- 


(iting RP ATAU Dara A AL ORT LR SYA aS OIE 
100 STANDING UP TO\LIGE 


ized slaughter. Love can bring reconciliation 
instead of suspicion, codperation instead of com- 
petitive greed. Christ, with His blessed gospel of 
good-will, must be Lord of all, and He will yet 
make cynical reactionary politicians look incred- 
ibly foolish. Their blind reliance on force, even 
when it has failed again and again, their reckless 
and provocative diplomacy, their devilish search 
for blinding and death-dealing poisons, their vin- 
dictive appetite for loot—the whole crazy business 
is directly at variance with the life and teaching 
of Jesus. Only world friendship can insure world 
peace. You can never overcome evil by more evil; 
but you can “ overcome evil with good.” The only 
effective way of destroying your enemies is by 
destroying their enmity. 

But what will religion do to friendship? It must 
have something to say about the relationships of 
life, because it is just in these perilous paths that 
we go astray. For one thing, it turns the friend- 
ship that asks into the friendship that gives. It 
elevates friendship into service, gives it a wider 
range and a purer loyalty. Christian friendship is 
not merely a comfortable companionship; it will 
become a passionate love for the whole world. 
Religion saves friendship from fugitiveness, and 
makes it tolerant and patient, firm and stable. It 
purifies friendship from all selfishness and egotism. 
And it does much more than this; it does the great- 
est thing of all, for it introduces us to the friend- 


ere 
ON RELIGION AND FRIENDSHIP 101 


ship of Jesus. Jesus differs from all other teachers 
and leaders, for He calls us to a warm personal 
friendship. In all human comradeships there are 
inevitable reserves. But in the friendship of Jesus 
there are no limitations. You can tell Him 
everything because He knows and understands 
everything. His friendship has a rich redemptive 
quality. Dean Inge is right when he says that 
“religion is not taught, it is caught.” We get the 
Divine contagion from friendship with Jesus. And 
by dwelling with His spotless purity and infinite 
love we are led to a Divine dissatisfaction with our 
own mean and feeble lives. 

A friend of mine says he hates to put on a new 
suit of clothes because it makes his face look so 
shabby! The man who becomes a friend of Jesus 
will find a lot of things looking shabby; and they 
will have to go. This most lovable Figure in his- 
tory draws all kinds of people into the circle of His 
friendship. The poor man is oppressed by drab 
monotony, but the prosperous man is often seized 
by boredom and satiety. What they both need is a 
faith on which they can live and leap forward. 
When Jesus captures their love and loyalty they 
find in His friendship a driving force, a new mo- 
mentum, a cleansing power. He makes friends of 
the most amazing people—queer, twisted, ugly, un- 
stable characters that promise nothing, but become 
completely transformed under the spell of His com- 
radeship. It is a good thing that He is not over- 


eee eee er ee ee eee 
102 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


particular about the friends He makes, or where 
should we be? But if He is to take our broken 
lives and make them beautiful by His friendship, 
He will do it on one condition: “ Ye are My friends 
if ye do whatsoever I command you.” 


AL 


ON LETTING BYGONES BE BYGONES 










“Tt is in vain for you to expect, it is impudent — 
for you to ask of God forgiveness on your own — 
behalf if you refuse to exercise this joe 
temper with respect to others.” 

—BIsHopP Hoapuay. 


XI 
ON LETTING BYGONES BE BYGONES 


S)KHY are our memories so capricious, un- 
| af ruly and unmanageable? The mystery 
“a VEY of memory seems to be almost un- 
‘4% fathomable. There are things we ought 
to forget and they continually haunt us; there are 
other things it is a crime to forget, and unless we 
make a note of them they elude us altogether. 
Failure to answer letters and keep engagements 
cannot be easily dismissed as mere inadventence, 
but must be condemned as rude neglect of which 
any Christian man should be ashamed. We talk 
about forgiving and forgetting, but it is a good deal 
easier to forgive than to forget. I suppose it is 
possible to train the memory. Dr. Parker thought 
so, for he once told me that he never kept an en- 
gagement book, but registered dates and hours in 
his mind with perfect safety. I wonder whether 
he found it as easy to exclude from his memory the 
things he wanted to forget? 

The difficult problem is how to forget our own 
silly mistakes and teasing irritations, and the un- 
avoidable stains that have soiled our minds, and yet 
remember the beautiful dreams, and the rich ex- 


105 





106 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


periences. Our memories are clogged with refuse 
when they might be stored with beauty. Unhap- 
pily the scum rises to the top. If we are ever to 
achieve any durable happiness we must forget our 
losses and defeats and blunders and refuse to be 
beaten down by.them. There is nothing more 
pitifully weak than to be always regretting our 
mistakes. As a wise man attends to the health and 
cleanliness of the body, so should he aim at the 
control of the mind by clear, brave thinking, con- 
stant prayer, and every kind of bracing mental 
discipline. 

We let bygones be bygones when people are 
dead, and are quite willing to indulge in “‘ tomb- 
stone panegyric.” But when we meet a man who 
has injured us it requires some grace to wipe out 
the past, for we are creatures of gusty passions and 
wayward emotions. “If he would only repent and 
behave himself,” we say, “ we could forgive and 
forget.’ Yet it was while we were yet sinners that 
Christ died for us. It is perhaps easier to forget 
our own sins than the offences of others, and yet 
just when the evil things seem to have fallen into 
a sort of veiled obscurity they have an ugly way 
of making a sudden and startling reappearance. 
Memory is a merciless instrument of justice. The 
past, with its dead dreams and lonely secrets, 
comes back tapping at the windows of the mind 
with a dreary, imperious reiteration. 

How can we get rid of blistering feuds and 


een EEE 
ON LETTING BYGONES BE BYGONES 107 


smouldering grudges? How can we cleanse our 
minds of petulant ill humor and peevish resent- 
ments? How can we make sure that when we are 
righteously indignant against social wrongs we are 
free from merely sour combativeness? How can 
we avoid dark suspicions, unaccountable hostilities 
and malicious imaginings? We shall not do it by a 
careless and cynical acquiescence in an imperfect 
and sin-ridden world. We shall not improve mat- 
ters by being what the world calls broad-minded— 
which only means ignoring the old inhibitions. 
When we are inclined to be hard on people younger 
than ourselves we shall do well to remember our 
own weaknesses and follies. I often think that old 
people rather overdo their wrath and indignation 
over the frivolities and rebellions of the young, 
simply because they forget that when they were 
young they were also imps of mischief—reckless, 
headstrong and intractable with all the confusing 
turmoil of adolescence. But for the real cure for 
tarnished records and unforgiving harshness we 
shall have to come to Christ who alone can scatter 
the spectres of the mind. 

There is a beautiful story told of Percy Ains- 
worth—a saintly Methodist minister who died very 
young, but left memories that are fragrant to this 
day. His young brother was going home, in Man- 
chester, England, very late one night when, to his 
astonishment, he saw Percy Ainsworth, who always 
went to bed early, standing before a building in a 


108 STANDING UP. TO [ifigg 


dark and squalid street, sponging the wall. He 
stopped amazed, and cried: “‘ Percy, what on earth 
are you doing? ’”’ And Ainsworth explained that 
earlier in the evening, going home from a service, 
he had seen written on this wall some foul and 
filthy words. He went home and tried to forget 
them. He attempted to read a book, he went to 
bed and sought sleep, but all in vain. Those vile 
words were there—people were reading them as 
they passed by, even the minds of women and boys 
would be poisoned by them. So at last he got up, 
found a sponge and walked through the city to the 
old building in the grimy street and washed out 
the unclean words. 

There are people in the world like that. They 
go about cleansing life of its foulnesses—sometimes 
with their tears. It was from Jesus that they 
learned this delicate ministry. But the stains that 
He had to wash away were so vile and corroding 
that He could only do it with His blood. And now 
at the touch of His scarred hands the soiled life 
sparkles with cleanliness, and bygones are bygones. 


ALT 


ON PUTTING THE BLAME 
SOMEWHERE ELSE 


“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars. 
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” 
— SHAKESPEARE. 


“And by and by my Soul returned to me, 
And answered, ‘I Myself am Heaven and 
Hels 
—Omar KHAYYAM. 


“Man is ever ready to think that lis failure 
comes from without rather than from within.” 
—GrorcE Moore 


XIT 


ON PUTTING THE BLAME SOMEWHERE 
ELSE 





é repulsive character of the people by 
whom we are surrounded. The man who cannot 
find anyone intelligent enough to talk to is seldom 
a very clever person himself. And the woman 
who complains that no one has ever loved or un- 
derstood her should seriously inquire whether she 
has ever loved or tried to understand anybody. I 
suggest that restlessness, impatience, fretfulness 
and unhappiness are in the great majority of cases 
due to causes within ourselves and often under our 
own control. I wonder how often depression and 
infirmity of temper are due to over-eating, lack of 
exercise and poisoned nerves? It is a fact that 
people who seldom walk, never eat fruit or drink 
water and sleep with closed windows have actually 
been known to blame God for their ill-health. A 
man may be a sentimentalist about other people, 
but he should be a realist about himself. 

The habit of putting the blame in the wrong 


i111 


112 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


place is a common vice with the victims of unsuc- 
cessful marriages. But it is a rare thing for a dis- 
astrous marriage to be wholly due to the failure of 
one of the partners. Nearly always there are 
faults on both sides which a Christian spirit com- 
bined with shrewd sense might, without undue 
strain, deal with successfully. There is probably 
no relationship in the world quite so precarious as 
marriage, and it is foolish to expect plain sailing 
and easy progress all the way. A friend of Tol- 
stoy’s, writing about the domestic controversy that 
harassed his later years, says: ‘‘ The cardinal cause 
of the dispute was the impossibility of two human 
beings pursuing the same spiritual development 
precisely contemporaneously.”’ 

A short while ago I read a magazine article by a 
woman who, in a rather remarkable confession, 
described the process by which she saved her mar- 
ried life when it was perilously near the rocks. 
She was rather deeply estranged from her husband 
and naturally she attributed to him the whole of 
the blame. One day, however, she experienced a 
curious awakening and began to ask herself certain 
pointed questions: ‘‘ What would he miss if I went 
away? If his secretary left him he would be panic- 
stricken; if he lost one or two of his men friends he 
would be broken-hearted. But if I went away— 
would he know it? He would miss no comradeship, 
for I am not giving him any. He would probably 
prefer to get his meals at his club, for I feed my 








ON PUTTING BLAME SOMEWHERE ELSE 113 


pet dog more carefully than I feed him. I have 
taken no interest in his work and shown him no 
warmth of affection. He provides for me gener- 
ously, he is faithful to me, he is a decent fellow, 
although occasionally impatient and exasperating, 
but then I might have married a drunkard or a 
dope fiend. Have I been a cold, selfish parasite 
instead of a loving, dependable partner?” Now, 
if husbands and wives would take themselves in 
hand like that and ask searching questions and 
face the facts, they would often discover that they 
have been putting the whole of the blame where it 
simply does not belong, and they would cease to 
hurt and misunderstand one another, and be able to 
restore harmonious relations. 

It is the fashion just now to put all the blame for 
the war on the international financiers, the militar- 
ists, the politicians and the armament makers, and 
I am certainly not going to defend any of them. 
But are we free from responsibility? The average 
man is not greatly interested in international affairs 
even now, but prior to 1914 did he ever give them 
a serious thought? We used to read about secret 
agreements, the balance of power, naval suprem- 
acy, the piling up of armaments, but what did we 
care? Everything was cheap, business was good, 
the streets were full of opulent crowds, we lived in 
a fools’ paradise, and we were greatly surprised 
when the crash came, and greed, and fear, and hate 
sent the world reeling and tottering, and plunged 


ee ————EeEeEeEEEEEE————————EE__— 
114 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


it into the folly and barbarity and cheap vindic- 
tiveness of war. Perhaps the most glaring example 
of unfairness is when we blame God for this easily 
preventable holocaust. God tried the daring, dan- 
gerous but exhilarating experiment of making us 
free—and inevitably we are free not only to be 
good, but to play the fool whenever we like. When 
we deplore the barren records and slow methods of 
governments and violently denounce them for their 
neglect of urgent and overdue reforms it is more 
than likely that we are putting the blame in the 
wrong place. ,What about our own feeble and 
drifting inertia? Governments are peculiarly sen- 
sitive to public opinion and would not be able to 
shirk their duties unless we allowed them to do so. 
The head of a government is very much like the 
driver of an omnibus—he is, of course, a capable 
man and knows how to drive, but he is rigidly lim- 
ited to certain routes, his speed is strictly con- 
trolled, and he starts when the bell rings. 

It is customary today to blame the churches for 
most of the things they do and for all the things 
they fail to achieve. Young people, especially, 
complain that the services are bleak and conven- 
tional, and the preaching colorless and _ boring. 
They want a stimulant and they get a narcotic— 
they ask for bread and they are given syrup; they 
need intellectual guidance and they hear a mere 
dribble of innocuous commonplaces. There is, no 
doubt, truth in all this, but what I object to is that 


ee 
ON PUTTING BLAME SOMEWHERE ELSE 115 


a man will attend one slovenly service and hear 
one illiterate preacher and then dismiss religion as 
derelict and bankrupt. It is useless to tell such 
people that religion is the most romantic and ad- 
venturous thing in the world, and that nothing else 
is able to explain the meaning of our existence or 
satisfy the fundamental and universal craving of 
the human heart. But I might perhaps suggest 
that all such critics should sit down one night and 
read the New Testament right through—treating 
it exactly as they would treat any other book. If 
anybody is scared by such a task let him read the 
four Gospels at a sitting and be thrilled by their 
amazing story. At all events he will find in Jesus 
Someone he can admire without any reservation. 


Fair is the sunshine, 
Fairer still the moonlight, 
And all the twinkling, starry host; 
Jesus shines fatrer, 
Jesus shines purer, 
Than all the angels heaven can boast. 


I wish the young men who find the churches 
stuffy and lifeless would capture them instead of 
criticizing them. I want to say this to youthful 
critics of both sexes: If the churches are as bad as 
you think you ought not to be satisfied to look on 
as passive spectators. Take hold of them and 
change them. The way is open to you. But, be- 
lieve me, when you blame the churches you are 


SARS EAU NTS ZAR RAE tL DATS Oe eee 
116 STANDING UP) TO Lite 


putting the blame in the wrong place. What have 
you done to make them stronger and more efficient? 
Have you ever dared anything, ever risked any- 
thing for the Church? You have done nothing, so 
far, except sneer and sulk. Now go in and take 
possession of the churches—no one can stop you— 
and start, under the leadership of Jesus, a great 
crusade to save the world. Whether you succeed 
or not, you will experience the most durable satis- 
faction of your life. 


ALII 


ON TRYING TO DODGE DIFFICULTY 


“ Death is the end of life; ah, why 
Should life all labor be? 
Let us alone. “Time driveth onward fast, 
And in a little while our lips are dumb. 
Let us alone. What is it that will last? 
All things are taken from us, and become 
Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past. 
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have 
To war with evil? Is there any peace 
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?” 

—TENNYSON IN “ THE LotTus-EATERS.” 


“Tf I drink oblivion for a single day 
So shorten I the stature of my soul.” 
—MEREDITH. 


“She was a Christian Scientist who accepted 
doctors, she was a pacifist who accepted war, she 
was a humanitarian who accepted executions, she 
was a democrat who accepted the total inferiority 
of all habits, cultures, races, religions and pros- 
perities not her own.’—FRANCIS HACKETT. 


XIII 


ON TRYING TO DODGE DIFFICULTY 


iaty 


a, Wo gS a rule a difficulty is only a difficulty so 
ey Ne 9) ) 
I Weay 





CaN ) squarely and deal with it drastically 
J ESE 8 and it dis rs. One day you are 
an appea Vay: 

called to a task which you think you will loathe. 
You indulge in a good deal of ingenious maneuver- 
ing in order to dodge it, and naturally you become 
increasingly apprehensive. If you are wise, you sit 
down and do it, and discover to your surprise and 
relief that you have thoroughly enjoyed the job. 
When I was organizing a great Mission to Central 
London, I arranged for a group of workers to visit 
sixteen thousand homes. It suddenly occurred to 
me that in common fairness I could scarcely ask 
them to do anything I was not prepared to do my- 
self, so I allotted myself a mean and evil-smelling 
street off Gray’s Inn Road. The dread of working 
that street worried me for a week, and I would 
thankfully have dodged it if I could. Then I de- 
cided that for my own peace of mind the best plan 
would be to go and do the work and get it out of 
the way. 

It turned out to be one of the happiest evenings 


119 


120 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


of my life. Never have I received a warmer wel- 
come anywhere than in those stuffy houses and ill- 
lighted tenements. The men were mostly out, but 
their ill-dressed, harassed, homely-looking wives, 
prematurely aged by drudgery, were pathetically 
touched that anyone should care enough about 
them to call in and bring an invitation to a service. 
And yet I had wanted to dodge my duty! I am 
ashamed to confess that this was not the only 
occasion on which I have had to kick myself into 
doing something that promised to be unpleasant. 
But my experience has taught me two things—the 
misery of trying to dodge difficult duties and the 
ease and happiness with which they can be per- 
formed when resolutely faced. 

The dodging of moral problems lands us some- 
times in mean evasions and contemptible sophis- 
tries and in ludicrous and humiliating situations. 
During the war bishops and clergymen abolished 
the sixth commandment. But they were rather 
shocked when greedy profiteers smashed the eighth 
commandment, flappers ignored the fifth and adult- 
erers broke the seventh! ‘ Ministers of God,” 
says Mr. Glenn Frank, the editor of the Century 
magazine, “‘ cannot turn themselves into hysterical 
press agents of generals in war time and expect 
men to take them seriously as authentic representa- 
tives of Jesus of Nazareth the day after the 
armistice.”” You may embrace a lady while a band 
is playing dance music, but do it when the band has 


ye 
ON TRYING TO DODGE DIFFICULTY 121 


stopped and you may be thrown into the street. If 
a church member is discovered gambling at Monte 
Carlo, I imagine that someone is likely to remon- 
strate with him rather severely. But if he gambles 
successfully on the Stock Exchange no one will 
think the worse of him, but will rather admire him 
as a clever, lucky fellow. If we go in for increased 
armaments they are, of course, only for the protec- 
tion of our coasts, but suppose another nation adds 
to its armies and navies—then it is pointing 
straight at the heart of our country. A church will 
deal drastically with a drunkard, but smile on a 
sweater—it would be greatly upset by a bitter 
quarrel between two of its members, but it will not 
try to stop two nations when they have entered 
on an orgy of scientific slaughter. We think of 
these baffling contradictions and dilemmas—and 
we dodge them, and go on avoiding stark realities. 
I once heard Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, 
when he was Prime Minister of England, say that 
a great political party had “ died of tactics.” The 
smart, cunning political opportunist, the spell- 
binder who dazzles the crowd, seems for a time to 
be a sort of superman, indispensable to his coun- 
try and his party. He dodges difficulty and defeat 
time after time, but it is a hazardous game, and one 
day he isa little too smart and honest men come 
into their own again. ‘‘ Machiavelli,” says Dean 
Inge, “is a treacherous guide. There is a kind of 
higher stupidity about cunning statecraft which 


a a a) 
122 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


ends in the undoing of those who practise it.” 
When you dodge a difficulty you have not disposed 
of it—it is still there waiting for you, and you are 
bound to meet it again sooner or later. The most 
disturbing menace will shrivel if faced bravely. 
Dodge it—or rather try to dodge it—and it will 
grow not only bigger but more unavoidable. 

Have we never tried to dodge our own moral 
infirmities by damning the faults of other people? 
What a weak and futile subterfuge it is! The 
spendthrift is blind to his own extravagances while 
he denounces the miser, and the callous and exact- 
ing employer dodges his own harshness by an elo- 
quent exposure of idleness and inefficiency. And 
it is possible for a man to dodge his own soul. He 
tries to put it off with a pretence of airy unconcern, 
to drug it with feverish pleasures, to silence it with 
vague protests of unbelief. But it cannot be kept 
up long. The soul cries out for God and nothing 
else will satisfy it. I believe the real reason why 
some people refuse to go to church is that they are 
afraid of hearing something disturbing and dis- 
quieting. They might hear the truth and have to 
face it. They might meet the God they have 
slighted and ignored. 

It may be wise sometimes to dodge temptation, 
but it is better to repel the invasion of dangerous 
allurements. Mere avoidance and evasion will not 
help us. We must beware of an easy and cowardly 
indifference to the facts of life. We must not dodge 


reer re ————————EeEE 
ON TRYING TO DODGE DIFFICULTY 123 


the ugly diseases of our modern society, for if 
everyone did that they would never be cured. The 
more odious and sickening they are, the more need 
there is to face them with gravity and courage, and 
attempt the distasteful task of rooting them out of 
society. I think it was Bishop Gore who said that 
mankind had swallowed dogmas with a voracious 
appetite, and generation after generation it had 
looked at the brotherhood of man and had said, 
“No; not that! ” The churches are full of people 
who, to quote Samuel Butler, would be as horrified 
to hear the Christian religion doubted as they 
would be to see it practised. We shall not be able 
much longer to dodge the problem of fierce, heart- 
less competition, and the damnation of the sweated. 
I shall never forget a picture that | saw some years 
ago in an art gallery in Paris. It represented a 
magnificent ball-room, a scene of dazzling luxury 
and splendor, but the dancers had stopped sud- 
denly, panic-stricken, as they gazed with fear and 
horror at the soiled, rough, clenched fist of a work- 
man smashing through the splintered boards of the 
shining floor. What do the victims of industrial- 
ism think when they look into the vacuous, arro- 
gant faces of the privileged and pampered women 
—dressed with a minimum of material and a maxi- 
mum of expense—who dwell in another world—a 
world of exotic luxury, artificial stimulus and 
voluptuous dancing? In the height of the London 
season—when hotels, restaurants and ball-rooms 


ae eee ee gr EN 
124 STANDING UP TO LIF 


were overcrowded—a woman selling matches in 
Bond Street, the very headquarters of fashion and 
luxury, suddenly collapsed and it was discovered 
that she had died of starvation. So much of every- 
thing for some people—so little for others. These 
and all other torturing perplexities must be looked 
straight in the face and dealt with on our knees 
before the Master, Christ, that fearless, open-eyed 
realist who never dodged a difficulty, who did not 
even evade the Cross, but by His infinite renunci- 
ation emancipated and redeemed the world. 


AIV 


ON SERVICEABLE SAINTS 


“Tt will never rain roses. . . . If we want 
more roses we must plant more trees.” 
—GerorcE Exrot. 


“It seemed to Catherine as if she had suddenly 
opened the door out of a dark passage and gone 
into a great light room. She saw for the first 
time quite plainly; and what she saw in that 
strange new clearness, that merciless, yet some- 
how curiously comforting clearness, was that 
love has to learn to let go, that love if it is real 
always does let go, makes no claims, sets free, is 
content to love without being loved—and that 
nothing was worth while, nothing at all in the 
tiny moment called life, except being good. 
Simply being good. And though people might 
argue as to what precisely being good meant, 
they knew in their hearts just as she knew in her 
heart; and though the young might laugh at this 
conviction as so much sodden sentiment, they 
would, each one of them who was worth any- 
thing, end by thinking exactly that. . . . Life 
was a flicker; the briefest thing, blown out 
before one was able to turn round. There was 
no time in it, no time in this infinitely precious 
instant, for anything except just goodness.’— 
THE AutTHor oF “ ErizasETH AND Hrr GERMAN 
GARDEN.” 


“It 1s the sinners who elect the saints, for 
what saint would ever admit that he was one? ’”— 
H. W. MassIncHAM, 


XIV 


_ ON SERVICEABLE SAINTS 





wPORHE stained-glass-window type of piety 
mr is not in great demand today. The 
G world, in its dejection and helplessness, 
S gy calls for the faith that fights, the good- 
as a glow on it, the religion that is dur- 
able and serviceable. Christ does not expect us to 
be extraordinarily clever, but He does ask us to be 
faithful. He looks for no spectacular display, but 
He asks us quietly and loyally to follow Him. He 
knows that what we are will talk so much louder 
than what we say. The saints we need today are 
the intense, urgent, serviceable saints, not the 
people ‘who mean well, but mean well feebly,” 
who spend their time in a morbid scrutiny of their 
own achievements, but the active, efficient, self- 
forgetting saints, who mean business, who are going 
to get things done, who are the servants of every- 
body, who squander their lives with glorious ex- 
travagance in the service of humanity. Carlyle 
said that the only hell that was really dreaded in 
his day was the hell of not making money. I be- 
lieve the time is coming when we shall dread most 
of all the hell of being no use to the world. 


127 


128 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


Some of the most serviceable saints I have ever 
known have been poor women who kept a home 
sweet, loved little children into fineness of char- 
acter, and endured drudgery patiently in order that 
the breadwinner should venture forth to his daily 
task untouched by care. They are unhonored and 
undistinguished, these humble heroines of the 
home, but their sons and daughters remember them 
in hours of struggle and temptation, and are kept 
clean and loyal by their inspiring example. It is 
the same in the churches. We talk of our “ lead- 
ers,” and I do not underestimate the value of their 
exhilarating ministry. They awaken our best en- 
thusiasms and nerve us for braver service. But 
the indispensable people are the obscure, unpre- 
tentious, unknown workers; the quiet, devoted 
Sunday-school teachers, working at the lesson 
late at night after shutting up the store; the 
steadfast, faithful lay preachers, tramping many 
a weary mile to preach the Gospel in a remote 
village; the little seamstress who works for a 
bare existence, but who brings five dollars to the 
minister for the missionary society; the tired 
mother, on her feet from morning to night, whose 
simple goodness and undimmed cheerfulness make 
us ashamed of our petty complainings and our 
fretful, exacting selfishness. ‘These are the ser- 
viceable saints who, in spite of dragging limita- 
tions and heavy handicaps, go forward to do their 
tiresome tasks with undaunted courage and un- 


ON SERVICEABLE SAINTS We, 


faltering patience. It is this homely, commonplace 
goodness that tells in the end and helps to redeem 
the world. 

I think one outstanding characteristic of the 
serviceable saint is a certain combination of sanity 
and daring, of calm certitude and restless adven- 
ture. He sees things in their right proportions, and 
he is not inclined to be wildly hysterical. He 
knows that the self-centered life is a perverted, 
senseless, irrational existence that fails to satisfy 
the heart of man. He has discovered the feverish 
fatigue, the infinite weariness of the pleasure chase, 
and he knows that to live under the lordship and 
leadership of Jesus Christ is the wisest, most rea- 
sonable thing a man can do. He looks at life 
squarely, hopefully, and quite fearlessly. Instead 
of trying to make himself happy and other peo- 
ple good, he is rather inclined to help other 
people to be happy and to make himself good. 
He has plenty of grit and tenacity and self- 
restraint. For the serviceable saint must possess 
real open-eyed common-sense, or he will not be 
serviceable long. Even his enthusiasm must be 
harnessed and disciplined. ‘“‘ You ha’ need o’ 
the Bible, you will ha’ to study for that,” said 
a Scotchman to a young candidate for the min- 
istry; “you ha’ need o’ grace, you will ha’ to 
pray for that; you ha’ need o’ common-sense, 
but if you ha’ no got that, you will ha’ to go 
back where you came from.”’ As Theodore Roose- 








130 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


velt once pointed out, the good man who has no 
common-sense ‘ will find himself at the mercy of 
those who, without possessing his desire to do 
right, know only too well how to make the wrong 
effective.” 

Nowhere is the serviceable saint more useful 
than in the realm of business, for he refuses to 
recognize any separating barrier between Chris- 
tianity and commerce. When he surrenders his 
life to Jesus Christ, he does not withhold anything 
from the rule of his Master. He brings to Christ 
not only his worship, but his ingenuity; not only 
the adoration of his heart, but the inventiveness of 
his mind. He serves his Lord not only with the 
singing of psalms, but with his business in- 
itiative and resource. He consecrates his imagi- 
nation to Divine service, and he does not even 
withhold his money. There are so-called saints 
who live in watertight compartments—in one a 
sleek and unctuous piety for Sunday, and in an- 
other a savage, selfish, and degrading lust for 
gold that tramples on human hearts six days in 
the week. 

There was a man in America who refused to live 
like this—he remembered even the weekdays to 
keep them holy. He had an enormous business, 
but it was not built up at the expense of sweated 
labor. When he died, his workmen wept. For this 
man was at all times much more anxious about the 
welfare of his employees than about the increase of 





ON SERVICEABLE SAINTS 131 


his profits. He left his men a million dollars, but, 
better still, he gave them three million dollars be- 
yond their wages in his lifetime. Once he noticed 
some men engaged in what seemed an unhealthy 
occupation; he immediately ordered a change of 
method, more comfortable to them, but very costly 
to him. He used to tell his branch managers not 
to push business too hard in competition with 
weaker opponents, especially in places where there 
were old-established houses of good character. He 
was a healthy saint, spiritually sensitive, morally 
sound. 

The right sort of saint is never a feeble person, 
smilingly tolerant of tyranny, timidly remote from 
the conflict with evil, patient with social wrong, 
easily compliant with bitter injustice. He can 
blaze into a fierce and righteous indignation. 
There is a passage in one of E. V. Lucas’s books 
which describes this kind of man: 

“¢There is no journalist whom I follow so 
closely. He has a fearless mind and a hatred of 
injustice. Do you like him?’ 

“ «Well, he compels attention,’ I said, ‘ but he is 
a little too near white heat for me.’ 

“¢Tf he were cooler,’ said Miss Gold, ‘ he would 
be tolerant—like you—and then he would be no 
use. There is so much comfortable tolerance, so 
little anger. I hope he will go on being angry.’ ” 

The purposeful, efficient saint prays in the words 
of Chesterton’s stirring hymn: 


roy STANDING UP TO LIFE 


“From lies of tongue and pen, 
From all the easy speeches 


That comfort cruel men 
* x 2K x 


Delwer us, good Lord!” 

It cannot be denied that a saint may sometimes 
be a rather exasperating person to live with. I 
know a somewhat conservative Congregational 
minister who, whenever he wants to rebuke me for 
showing enthusiasm over anything, remarks that 
he himself likes to keep his feet on the ground. 
Now a saint may wish to have his wings in the air. 
A well-known writer expresses his preference for 
“kindly, unemphatic people.” A saint will be 
kindly, but he is seldom unemphatic. He goes 
about stabbing neutrality and disturbing indiffer- 
ence. He wants to change the world—titerally he 
wants to turn it upside down. And he is in rather 
a hurry about it. He has principles and convic- 
tions—awkward things to have if you want to lead 
a quiet life and be popular—and he expresses them 
forcefully, sometimes with fierce intolerance. In 
this he is not altogether unlike his Master. Jesus 
did not say that a man who was unkind to little 
children was unattractive and mistaken. He said 
it would be better for such a man to hang a stone 
round his neck and pitch him into the sea. A real 
saint will take risks and is never panicky in face 
of danger. That very serviceable saint, Silvester 
Horne, once suggested to me a certain program 


| 
ON SERVICEABLE SAINTS 133 


which I thought rather dangerous. ‘‘ Dangerous,” 
he exclaimed, “ my dear fellow, whenever a thing 
looks dangerous you may be sure it is a big thing 
worth doing.” When you come to think of it it is 
a very dangerous thing to tell a man that his sins 
can be forgiven. The sort of saint I have in mind 
will not be enslaved by any tradition. He refuses 
to run in blinkers with a conscripted intelligence 
and a standardized mind. He is not gullible and 
he is not to be browbeaten by any majority, how- 
ever powerful. He does not love controversy, but 
he will not avoid it. To him religion is a stimu- 
lating adventure, a spiritual dynamic, not a mere 
routine or ritual, certainly not a dull and uninspir- 
ing obligation. 

And yet the serviceable saint has a very winning 
and gracious humility. He does not surprise the 
world with an occasional act of spectacular benevo- 
lence, and then wait for the applause. He does the 
Divine drudgery and bears the other man’s burden, 
impelled by the dynamic of a great affection. Asa 
matter of fact, no man who has ever really tried to 
follow Jesus Christ is very proud of himself. He 
knows that his only safety is in keeping very close 
to his Leader. It would be difficult sometimes to 
hold on but for the resource of prayer. It scatters 
our misgivings and brings to the most impoverished 
and defeated life a tumultuous vitality. ‘‘ When a 
crisis or an emergency comes,” said a very shrewd 
business man to me, the other day, “I refer it to 


134 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


the Lord.” It is possible to pray our distractions 
and disquietudes out of the way. 

Not so long since a friend of mine was being 
shown over a great American university. In one of 
the halls he noticed a beautiful stained-glass win- 
dow, and in the.center of it, to his intense surprise, 
there was the picture of a very homely old lady. 
“Who is that?” he said to the official who was 
showing him the buildings. ‘‘ Why, that’s Florence 
Nightingale,” was the reply. ‘‘ We wanted to put 
the picture of a saint in that window—a real work- 
ing saint, you know—and we thought we couldn’t 
do better than get a portrait of the splendid old 
woman.” The authorities of that university had 
put the halo on the right head. They knew that 
there is no true saintliness without sympathy, 
service, and sacrifice. 

I once knew a very serviceable saint—and she 
was the happiest woman I have ever met. She had 
the strangest idea of how to achieve happiness—if 
she ever thought about happiness at all. She was 
an extraordinarily beautiful girl, clever, refined, 
athletic, well educated, with an adoring family and 
a luxurious country home. Yet, when I knew her, 
she was living in a foul and repulsive London slum, 
working as a ‘Sister of the People.” She had 
turned her back on security and comfort and delib- 
erately chosen the dirt and distress, the squalor 
and shame of mean streets and sunless courts. And 
she was happy! “Sister,” I said to her one day, 


nrc 
ON SERVICEABLE SAINTS 135 


“how can you do it?” Well, she argued, Jesus 
loved these poor people—certainly nobody else 
seemed to care anything about them—and even 
Jesus could not help them very much unless those 
who loved Him would go for Him, as’ His repre- 
sentatives, and live with His poor children and try 
to sweeten and brighten their lives. And so that 
was how it happened! And as she told me her 
eyes were dancing with happiness. Her goodness 
seemed to sterilize the foulness of the neighborhood 
—her very happiness cleared the air. She was 
nurse, doctor, poor man’s lawyer, evangelist; she 
was the terror of grasping and tyrannical land- 
lords; once she spent long hours, when she was 
tired out, sitting in a hospital by the bedside of a 
prostitute who was afraid to die unless Sister held 
her hand. She would collect money to buy tobacco 
for the old men in the poorhouse or to send tuber- 
cular children to the sea—and I noticed that she 
never thanked the comfortable people who gave 
her money. Why should she? She was letting 
them in on a good thing, allowing them the privi- 
lege of sharing in her happiness. I left her one day 
as she went, singing and smiling, into a dark, sin- 
ister, evil-smelling tenement house, and a man who 
passed her as he came out, exclaimed: “¢ Wonder- 
ful how she keeps up her spirits with nothing to 
help her.” Nothing to help her! How she would 
have laughed! As if Jesus ever deserted those who 
enter on perilous adventures for His sake. 


ee ee eR 
136 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


The world will be saved when every Christian is 
really a Christian. Vital Christianity in action is 
the most disturbing and revolutionary force in the 
world. It is a matter of life and death. And yet it 
is the people who go all the way with Jesus who 
enjoy the highest happiness and the deepest satis- 
factions. No man enjoyed the exhilaration of life 
more than Hugh Price Hughes, yet he told me once 
that he had endured sleepless and anxious nights 
when he realized that there were enough fallen 
women on the London streets to fill a large theatre 
several times over. But then he was a shrewd 
working saint, who immediately went out to serve 
and save these unhappy wanderers. The man who 
hears the cry of human need and the call of his 
crucified Master, and slinks away into cowardly 
comfort, will be miserable as well as ineffective. 
The Christian who quietly shoulders his cross will 
find that he is not alone. There is with him a 
strong, dependable, understanding Comrade Who 
bears the heavier end—and He is like unto the Son 
of God. 


XV 


ON THE VALUE OF LOYALTY 





“True as the dial to the sun, 
Although it be not shin’d upon.” a 
| E —BUuTLER. 


XV 
ON THE VALUE OF LOYALTY 


A OYALTY, like duty, appears to some 
S 1 yy people a very cold and uninspiring 
Ul 7 *s¢ word. And yet it is a fact that the 

people we like best are the dependable 
people. They may not dazzle or attract like the 
impulsive, selfish, brilliant butterflies, but they are 
the folk we really love. You can lean up against 
them when you are in a tight place. They have 
that granite loyalty that can bear with our littleness 
and never laugh at it, endure our faults and never 
gloat over them, and that marvelous gift of sym- 
pathy that can see some speck of goodness in our 
mixed and twisted characters. They seem always 
to defend the integrity of the human soul. The 
world would be a dark, cold place without these 
good, simple folk who take but little notice of the 
irritating riddles of human relationships, but 
quietly practise a patient loyalty and a radiant 
kindness. They play the game when no gallery is 
applauding and no umpire is watching. They do 
not indulge in flowery heroics, but they can be 
counted on all the time. They are kind without 
being priggish or self-conscious about it. They 


139 





| 
140 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


don’t cry like babies because they can’t have every- 
thing just right. They keep the flag flying when 
things are at their worst. Their friendship is 
durable, understanding, loyal. 

The war has led to such moral confusion and 
hectic self-indulgence that today no one is shocked 
at anything and we are in grave danger of losing 
the simple loyalties of life. I venture to suggest 
that we had better watch them with vigilance and 
try to recover them where they have slipped away. 

We need, for instance, greater loyalty to the 
home if we are to maintain any home life at all. 
For it is rapidly and surely disappearing. Let us 
admit that the middle-class home has often been 
stuffy and dull and oppressive, and that it is some- 
times very hard for parents to understand the 
feverish restlessness, the passionate rebellion of the 
young. In a novel of Galsworthy’s one of the 
characters says: ‘“ Ah! why on earth are we born 
young? Now, if only we were born old, and grew 
younger year by year, we should understand how 
things happen, and drop all our cursed intoler- 
ance.” Certainly many ghastly blunders would be 
avoided if we were wise and cool in youth; but a 
serene and stabilized life would be secured at a 
fearful sacrifice of color and romance and adven- 
ture. No, the only way is for the old to try to 
understand the young, and for the young to show 
loyalty and sympathy toward the old. And that, 
I fear, the young are not even attempting to do 


ee NEES RE RENTER ———————— 


ON THE VALUE OF LOYALTY ‘141 


today. They snatch at independence rather too 
greedily, and are intolerably touchy over any inter- 
ference. They have abandoned the conventions, 
and substituted smartness for sentiment, and the 
wild fever of the dance hall and the card-room for 
the simple loyalties of the home. They might re- 
member that they owe something to their parents, 
seeing that they grew up at their expense. 
Petulant, neurotic women complain of the grey 
monotony of the home routine, and sneer at what 
they call slavery to duty. Yet it is just possible 
that slavery to duty may turn out to be the truest 
freedom. After all, intelligent people don’t want 
to rush about in a continual hustle of jazzing im- 
becility. The desire to escape from monotony 
sounds all right, but where are you going to escape 
to? Most likely to some other monotony, equally 
oppressive and much worse because unredeemed by 
any gracious motive. I know people who have 
thrown off all restraint but they have found no 
authentic happiness. We need to get back to the 
old, sane idea of the nobility of labor. A good cook 
is of much more use to the world than an expert 
bridge player. It may be almost as fine a thing to 
bring up a good family as to bring down a bad 
Government. A good home is a rather wonderful 
institution, and nothing should be allowed to break 
it up. I often feel that the women who neglect 
their homes for cheap and tawdry amusements are 
rather tricking themselves—they think they are 





142 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


happier than they are. The forced gaieties of the 
ball-room are not to be compared with the laughter 
of a little child. There is also this to be said: that 
most of those who chatter the modern jargon about 
liberty have not got the least idea as to what liberty 
really means. 

We need greater loyalty to the Church. I sug- 
gest that there is, today, one special reason why we 
should stick to the Church for all we are worth. It 
is this: only the Church can bring peace to this 
vexed and stricken world, because only the Church 
knows the secret of how to change the hearts of 
men. There are, I know, a great many clever peo- 
ple going about criticizing the Church. They 
cheerfully agree that it is nearly dead. As a matter 
of fact, it is very much alive—I only wish I could 
say that it is alive and kicking! It is a fact worth 
remembering that the bitterest critics of the 
churches never by any chance enter one. I would 
venture to say this to young people who are drifting 
away from the Church: if the church you go to 
doesn’t satisfy you, if the services seem barren and 
rather boring—still be loyal to it, because it is so 
much more blessed to give than to receive. Give 
all you have to it—your youth and vitality, your 
courage and resources, even your laughter and 
leaping spirits—and your loyalty will bring you 
radiant reward. It will bring you happiness be- 
cause it has taken you out of yourself—beyond and 
above yourse!{—out into a great adventure of faith. 





ok LT A A DL 
ON THE VALUE OF LOYALTY 143 


Just as you are bound to Jesus by a certain tenacity 
of soul that we call loyalty, so be loyal to His 
Church. If that goes, you lose the only means of 
rescuing the world from its poisonous hates, its 
devastating materialism, its bitter despair. The 
people who make secret treaties, and the people 
who make armaments, and the people who only 
make money, may get together one day and make 
another war. Then we shall need a loyal, live 
Church, filled with young life, which will refuse to 
be subservient to the State, but which, at any sacri- 
fice, will be loyal to the teaching of Jesus. We 
need young people in the Church because they can 
save it from its greatest danger—an easy-going, 
complacent neutrality. 

The Legislature of Mississippi once put on its 
official records this strange and striking note: 
‘Whereas we have read with great pleasure the 
following remark of the devoted mother of our es- 
teemed Governor, the Hon. Earl Brewer, who, 
when asked if the day her son was inaugurated 
Governor of the State of Mississippi was not the 
happiest day of her life, replied, ‘I was just as 
happy when my boy joined the Church,’ and there- 
fore be it Resolved that the above expression be 
inscribed on our journal as an example to the 
mothers of our State, and to show our appreciation 
of this splendid sentiment.” A very strange record 
—probably absolutely unique. But the mother 
who was as happy the day her boy joined the 





144 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


Church as on the day he became ruler of a Com- 
monwealth knew what she was talking about. She 
knew that the finest manhood is built on the Chris- 
tian faith, that Christless politics must inevitably 
lead to corrupt government. 

We need a more robust loyalty in the Church 
today—a loyalty that will loosen the purse-strings 
and give up leisure and comfort for the sake of 
social and institutional service. If the young peo- 
ple find a church feeble, as they may, let them, with 
consecrated audacity, take possession of it and 
make it strong. Let them stop asking what the 
Church is doing for the young people, and show 
what the young people can do for the Church. It 
is no good criticizing ministers in the press and at 
the dinner-table—go and see the minister and have 
it out with him. If you only knew it, many min- 
isters are breaking their hearts because the young 
people hold aloof from them. If you don’t like a 
sermon, go and tell the preacher why you don’t 
like it. He will be delighted to discuss it with you. 
I once lived for a year in the country, and I walked 
eight miles every Sunday in order to attend a little 
Baptist chapel, the minister of which was a schol- 
arly young man in his first pastorate. One night a 
week we went for a long tramp, during which we 
discussed with perfect frankness the sermons of 
the previous Sunday. He told me how much he 
wished his people would say something about his 
sermons—even if they disagreed with them or dis- 


ONM HEY ALUE OF LOYALTY 145 


liked them. But they failed to show the slightest 
interest, and he could never. find out what they 
were thinking. I remember another minister who 
said to me, in sheer despair: ‘“‘ My people give me 
nothing but my salary.” Many a depressed and 
disquieted minister would leap for joy if he had the 
stimulating comradeship and frank loyalty of his 
young men and women. 


And we must be loyal to Jesus. For loyalty to. 
Jesus has a great dynamic quality. It compels a 
man to dedicate his life to the Highest, drives him 
into service for the lowest. Loyalty to Jesus con- 
strains us to work for a better social order in the 
world He loves and died to save. Undivided alle- 
giance to Jesus may turn out to be a very disturb- 
ing business. For He will ask us to be kind to 
people we don’t like. He will not let us boss any- 
body. He will expect us to love the poor and the 
unclean and the disinherited; and His teaching 
about riches is rather disconcerting—He cuts clean 
across the passion for possession. Moreover, we 
shall usually find ourselves on the unpopular side, 
and that may mean loneliness and isolation. Yet 
loyalty to Jesus brings an indestructible peace, an 
intoxicating joy, a quiet, steady faith that honestly 
looks facts in the face and finds life worth while, 
an anchorage of joy and satisfaction in the midst 
of many baffling futilities, ragged rebellions, and 
irritating limitations. We must be loyal even when 
we cannot see our way very far—even when we find 


146 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


it difficult to believe. Because loyalty to Christ 
leads to a transforming vision of Christ—those 
who do His will see the meaning of things—and one 
day we are able to go on from dim conjecture to 
glorious certainty. 


XVI 


ON MAKING CHRISTIANS CHRISTIANS 


“ . . I myself commend 
Unto thy guidance from this hour; 
Oh! let my weakness have an end! 
Give unio me, made lowly wise, 
The spirit of self-sacrifice. 


BB] 
° 


— WORDSWORTH. 


“Tdeals are funny things. They wont work 
unless you do.” 


“Take most of my countrymen, I am a heathen 
with religious intervals.’—H. W. MAssINGHAM, 


XVI 
ON MAKING CHRISTIANS CHRISTIANS 


oe, HAVE sometimes thought that instead 

© of organizing missions for outsiders— 

fie» for those whom we politely term the 

29% lost, it might be more profitable to hold 
special Hee tnpe with the object of making Chris- 
tians Christians. Because you have only to sit 
down and read the four Gospels to discover that 
you are not really a Christian. You are a Christian 
—with reservations. You do not even propose to 
carry out the commands of Jesus. Someone has 
said that there has been only one Christian, and He 
was crucified, and there is little doubt that 1f any- 
one had attempted to practice the teaching of Jesus 
during the war he would have been promptly im- 
prisoned or shot. Moreover, all conversions are 
more or less partial. One man is moved only on 
the ethical side, and he remains hard and bad- 
tempered. In another case—and this is more com- 
mon—conversion touches only the emotions, and 
ethically there is but little change, for emotionalism 
has dull and barren reactions. Our Christian life 
is a sort of switchback—an unstable thing of ups 
and downs, dreary failures and questionable suc- 


149 








150 STANDING UP TO LIFE 


cesses. We are feeble and faint-hearted, inefficient 
and spiritually limp, and can only just manage to 
keep our heads above water. All this is probably 
due to the fact that our conversion was partial and 
incomplete. The word “ conversion ” only appears 
twice in the four Gospels, and on both occasions it 
is used concerning those who were presumably 
already converted. It was to Peter that Christ 
said, “ When thou art converted—” and He was 
addressing His disciples when He said, “ Except 
ye be converted—.” We are driven to the conclu- 
sion that however good a man may be, he still needs 
to go on being converted and that conversion is not 
something convulsive that happens once, but a slow 
process of growth and progress. 

The reason why, as Christians, we are so de- 
jected and ineffective is that we don’t go far 
enough. We regard our faults with easy-going 
equanimity. Our allegiance is perfunctory. Be- 
cause we have no root we wither away. We have 
just enough religion to keep us away from certain 
doubtful occupations that once gave us pleasure, 
but we have not gone far enough to revel in the 
radiant, intoxicating happiness that comes to those 
who have unreservedly surrendered their lives to 
Jesus Christ. We juggle with conscience and are 
ready to trim our sails to the wind. We walk in 
tricky and treacherous paths and are easily caught 
by enervating entanglements. We are not danger- 
ously ill, we are not gloriously well—we are listless 








22]. 
ON MAKING CHRISTIANS CHRISTIANS 151 


convalescents. Our Christian life is pedestrian and 
laborious. We have faith, but not a deep, raptur- 
ous, dynamic faith that must inevitably translate 
itself into service and sacrifice. 

A great preacher—one of the truest Christians I 
have ever known—once told me that there was one 
terrible text on which he had never dared to 
preach: “Jf any man have not the spirit of Christ 
he is none of His.’ Surely no sincere person can 
read these words without experiencing deep con- 
trition and self-abasement, for, as regards most of 
us, we must face the disconcerting fact that we 
have not the Spirit of Christ. The difference be- 
tween what we are and what we might be is some- 
thing like the difference between a pier and a 
bridge. You never get very far on a pier—it 
stretches out a few hundred feet into the sea, and 
when you reach the end of it you have to come 
back. But a bridge takes you somewhere—a 
bridge will carry you from Canada into the United 
States—and you need not return. And Christians 
would become better Christians if, instead of 
merely making spasmodic excursions into religion, 
indulging in bursts of emotion, spurts of piety, they 
quietly, steadily, firmly walked across the bridge 
from one kind of life to another which is entirely 
different. The Christian life should be not an occa- 
sional promenade, but a determined pilgrimage. 
It cannot be lived in an aimless, desultory go-as- 
you-please fashion. It must grow and expand if it 








Abe STANDING UP TO LIFE 


is to exist at all. I heard one of the greatest 
preachers in America tell a story of a little girl 
who fell out of bed. When her mother asked her 
how she did it she replied: “I guess I went to 
sleep too near the place where I got in.” An illumi- 
nating illustration of what is the matter with some 
of us. " 

What would happen if all Christians were Chris- 
tians? There would be no more war. There would 
be no more appeals for funds from Foreign Mis- 
sionary Boards and other Christian organizations, 
because gifts would be showered on such institu- 
tions in excess of their needs. Churches would 
never again be short of workers—they would have 
waiting lists of those who were impatiently seeking 
opportunities of service. City churches would con- 
sider it their duty to know all about the brothels in 
their neighborhood, and if some poor girl suddenly 
thought of her mother or of God and wanted to 
make her escape into a cleaner, purer life she would 
go round to the nearest church and find it open to 
receive and welcome her. No prisoner would ever 
come out of the penitentiary without being met by 
a representative of a Christian church. We should 
be nervously apprehensive about having too much 
money and we should not sleep well while our 
brothers and sisters were huddled in overcrowded 
and unsanitary tenements. The world would begin 
to be impressed by the power of Christianity, and 
when we impress other people by our piety we shall 


—— a) 
ON MAKING CHRISTIANS CHRISTIANS 153 


have made very real progress. I remember years 
ago a Sister of a great London Mission telling me 
about a factory girl who, when reminded that it was 
the anniversary of her conversion, said, “ Well, 
Sister, I can’t say I see much difference, but mother 
says she sees a difference.”’ We might be great 
evangelists without uttering a single word. 

When Christians are Christians they will change 
the whole social system. After a conversation with 
that brave adventurous soul, Charles Silvester 
Horne, an American journalist came out into the 
street and in tones of wonder and amazement, 
exclaimed: “ That man carries Christianity to ex- 
cess.” He only meant that Silvester Horne loved 
Christ so much that he could never be content with 
an inoffensive, individualistic pietism, but must lay 
down his life in a desperate fight against poverty 
and injustice. Clemenceau complained with some 
bitterness that: “ When I talk to Mr. Wilson it is 
as though I were speaking to Jesus Christ.” But 
Woodrow Wilson, the adventurous idealist, will be 
remembered with affectionate homage when Cle- 
menceau, the pagan war-maker, is completely for- 
gotten. Christianity is the only cure for social 
disorders. Nothing but practical religion can solve 
the problems that distress and harass us. The 
leaven is spreading and materialism is already 
doomed. There is a very interesting passage in the 
life of Lord Salisbury which has never received the 
attention it deserves—a passage which shows how 


154 SLANDING UP TOViIEs 


fully he understood the revolutionary effects of 
Christianity. The author of the biography, Lady 
Gwendolen Cecil, says of her father: ‘‘ He quoted 
Professor Clifford’s accusation against Christianity 
that it had destroyed two civilizations and had 
only just failed in destroying a third—and he 
quoted. it with agreement. What had been would 
be. . . . We had been warned that Christianity 
could know no neutrality and history had verified 
the warning. It was incapable of co-existing per- 
manently with a civilization which it did not inspire 
and any such as came into contact with it withered. 
How much more must this be so with one that had 
been formed under its auspices and had subse- 
quently rejected it. Such a society must inevi- 
tably perish.” 

Some years ago, at a church anniversary in Lon- 
don, I met Dr. Clifford, and he asked me to intro- 
duce him to the preacher—as if he needed an 
introduction to anybody! After the service I made 
up a party of five or six distinguished preachers 
who wanted to talk to Dr. Clifford, and we ad- 
journed to the Russell Hotel for tea. Suddenly Dr. 
Clifford got up and in spite of many protests an- 
nounced that he must go. I went to the door with 
him and ventured to ask why he had to leave us so 
soon. He then told me that in connection with the 
church of which he was minister he had a home for 
domestic servants where they could go when out of 
a situation. Some mistresses, he explained, were 


Ee 
ON MAKING CHRISTIANS CHRISTIANS 155 


very hard and if a servant came home late, or if 
some trouble arose, they would put a girl’s boxes 
in the hall and tell her to clear out. Under such 
perilous circumstances she could find a refuge and 
welcome in Dr. Clifford’s little home. ‘‘ And,” he 
added, “ every Friday evening I call in and spend 
an hour talking to them—they seem to like it.” So 
the most famous and most trusted public man in 
the English Free Churches, the gallant hero of a 
hundred fights, went off on his tiresome journey by 
omnibus and subway, rather than disappoint half- 
a-dozen domestic servants who were out of a job. 
I think John Clifford was a Christian. 


THE END 


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ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 


perenne erence ES SEL SESS 


JAMES I. VANCE, D.D., LL.D. 


God’s Open 
Sermons that Take Us Out of Doors. $1.50 


“Throughout all those brief sermons runs the thought: 
*Man needs a sense of far horizons to save his soul.’ 
Dr. Vance emphasizes the fact that much of the life of 
Christ was spent out-of-doors. He was an open-air 
preacher and His greatest sermons were delivered out-of- 
doors, one on a mountain top, one beside a well. Alto- 
gether helpful and inspiring book.”—Boston Transcript. 


REV. PETER WALKER (Editor) 


Introduction by Thomas £, Masson 
Sermons for the Times 


By Present-Day Preachers. $1.50 

A thoroughly representative display of contemporary 
pulpit effort. Sermons by David James Burrell, Samuel 
Parkes Cadman, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Newell Dwight 
Hillis, Charles E. Jefferson, Ieander S. Keyser, Francis J. 
McConnell, William Pierson Merrill, William A. Quayle, 
William B. Riley, Frederick S. Shannon, John Timothy 
Stone, and Cornelius Woelfkin. ‘The best work of Amer- 
ican preachers only. 


J. T. VAN BURKALOW, Ph.D. 
The Lost Prophecy $2.00 


A book for the present hour, claiming the attention of 
all those interested in critical and textual study of Holy 
Scripture. The “Lost Prophecy” is that referred to in 
Matthew’s Gospel (11: 23) “that it might be fulfilled which 
was spoken through the prophets that He [Jesus] should 
be called a Nazarene.” 


W. OL. WATKINSON, D.D. 
Author of “The Shepherd of the Sea,” ete. 


The Conditions of Conversion 

$1.50 

‘’The discourses, in many respects, are models for any 

young minister to-day. The English is fauitless, the illus- 

trations apt and abundant, and the thought of the message 

drives home to the heart. The subjects are very practical, 

and such as need to be heard from every pulpit.”— 
Baptist and Reflector. 


THOMAS TIPLADY 
Author of “The Cross at the Front,” ete. 


The Influence of the Bible 


On History, Literature and Oratory. $1.00 
“Pull of suggestion. Every reader who will thought- 
fully peruse the pages will be sent back to the Bible with 
a new hope, and will read the Word with fresh vigour. 
Put it into the hands of young men with confidence, feel- 


ing that its message will go right home.’”—Wesleyan 
ethodist, - 








BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES. 


MARION LAWRANCE 


Marion Lawrance: 

The Father of Modern Sunday School Work. 
A Biography by his son, Harold G. Lawrance. 
Illustrated. $4.00 or $5.00 

An inspiration and a practical working tool for all 
Sunday-school workers is this comprehensive life of the 
great authority whom the Sunday School Times designated 
“the most experienced Sunday school leader of our day.’ 


CHARLES L. THOMPSON, D.D. 


Secretary of the Board of Home Missions, 
. Presbyterian Church, U. S. A. 


Autobiography of Charles Lemuel 


hompson 
Edited by Elizabeth Osborn Thompson, with a 


Foreword by Vance ‘Thompson. $2.50 

The record of a long, colorful, remarkably full and 
useful life, of one of the outstanding figures in the Chris- 
tian activities of the Western world, told with fine modesty 
and admirable restraint. Vance Thompson, the newspaper 
correspondent of international fame, writes the Introduc- 
tion to the Autobiography of his father, 


WILLIAM G. SHEPHERD 


Author of ‘‘Confessions of a War Correspondent,” etc. 
Great Preachers as Seen by a 


Journalist $1.50 
Character-sketches from the hand of an _ experienced 
interviewer of a number of prominent preachers: David 
J. Burrell, S. Parkes Cadman, Russell H. Conwell, Harry 
Emerson Fosdick, Charles L. Jefferson, Bishop Francis ff 
McConnell, John Timothy Stone, John Roach Straton, 
Christian Reisner, the late Bishop Charles D. Williams, 
and G. Campbell Morgan. 


ELIJAH R. KENNEDY 


The Real Daniel Webster 


Foreword by Judge Frederick Evan Crane, 


New York. Illustrated. $2.00 

Not only are Webster’s great achievements and the 
manifold richness of his intellectual endowments brought 
out in conspicuous fashion by Mr. Kennedy, but also the 
utter falsity of the many calumnies with which his 
enemies slandered Webster’s name. 


LUCY SEAMAN BAINBRIDGE 


Yesterdays 
“Memories Gleaned from Bygone Years.” 
Illustrated. $1.25 
In a chatty, intimate way, Mrs. Bainbridge recalls some 
of the incidents of her life, now long removed by the 
passing of the years, yet kept close and green in the 
garden of memory. 





STRIKING ADDRESSES 


JOHN HENRY JOWETT,D.D. 


God Our Contemporary 


A Series of Complete Addresses $1.50. 


Among the pulpit-giants of to-day Dr, Jowett has been 
given a high place. Every preacher will want at once 
this latest product of his fertile mind. It consists of a 
series of full length sermons which are intended to show 
that only in God as revealed to us in Jesus Christ can 
we find the resources to meet the needs of human life. 


SIDNEY BERRY, M.A. 


e oS 

Revealing Light $1.50, 
A volume of addresses by the successor to Dr. Jowett 
at Carr’s Lane Church, Birmingham, the underlying aim 

of which is to show what the Christian revelation means 
in relation to the great historic facts of the Faith and © 
the response which those facts must awaken in the hearts 
of men to-day. Every address is an example of the 
best preaching of this famous “‘preacher to young men.” 


FREDERICK C. SPURR 
Last Minister of Regent’s Park Chapel, London. 


The Master Key 
A Study in World-Problems $1.35. 


A fearless, clearly-reasoned restatement of the terms of 
the Christian Gospel and its relation to the travail through 
which the world is passing. Mr. Spurr is a man in the 
vanguard of religious thought, yet just as emphatically as 
any thinker of the old school, he insists on one Physician 
able to heal the wounds and woes of humanity. 


RUSSELL H. CONWELL, D.D. 
Pastor Baptist Temple, Philadelphia, 


Unused Powers $1.25. 
To “Acres of Diamonds,” “The Angel’s Lily,” “Why 
Lincoln Laughed,” “How to Live the Christ Life,” and 
many other stirring volumes, Dr. Conwell has just added 
another made up of some of his choicest addresses. Dr. 
Conwell speaks, as he has always spoken, out of the ex: 
perimental knowledge and practical wisdom of a man, who 
having long faced the stark realities of life, has been 
exalted thereby. 


GAIUS GLENN ATKINS, D.D. 


Minister of the First Congregational Church, 
Detroit, Michigen. 


The Undiscovered Country $1.50. 

A group of addresses marked by distinction of style 
and originality of approach. The title discourse furnishes 
a central theme to which those following stand in rela- 
tion. Dr. Atkins’ work, throughout, is marked by clarity 
ef presentation, polished diction and forceful phrasing, 








TIMELY ESSAYS AND STUDIES 
| 


NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS 
Author of “Great Books as Life-Teachers.” 


Great Men as Prophets of a New Era 
$1.50. 
Dr. Hillis’ latest book strikes a popular chord. It 
fairly pulses with life and human sympathy. He has 
a large grasp of things and relations, a broad culture, 
a retentive memory and splendid imagination, and there 
ate few writers to-day with so large an audience assured 
in advance. The subjects include: Dante; Savonarola; 
William the Silent; Oliver Cromwell; John Wesley; John 
Milton; Garibaldi; John Ruskin, etc. 


THOS. R. MITCHELL, M.A., B.D. 
The Drama of Life 


A Series of Reflections on Shakespeare’s 
“Seven Ages.” Introduction by Nellie L. McClung. 
$1.25. 
A fresh, stimulating discussion of old themes. Mr. 
Mitchell handles his subject with unusual directness, 
bringing to its discussion clarity of thought and lucidity 
of expression which has already won the enthusiastic 
endorsement of Sir William Robertson Nicoll, Chas. W. 
Gordon, D.D., (Ralph Connor) Archdeacon Cody and 
Prof. Francis G. Peabody. 


D. MACDOUGALL KING, M.B. 
Author of “The Battle with Tuberculosis.” 


Nerves and Personal Power 


Some Principles of Psychology as Applied to 
Conduct and Health. With Introduction by Hon. 
W. L. Mackenzie King. $2.00 


Premier King says: “My brother has, I think helped 
to reinforce Christian teaching by showing wherein recent 
medical and scientific researches are revealing the founda- 
tions of Christian faith and belief in directions hitherto 
unexplored and unknown.—The world needs the assurance 
this book can scarcely fail to bring.” 


REP. R. E. SMITH Waco, Texas. 
Christianity and the Race Problem 
$1.25. 


A sane, careful study of the Race problem in the South, 
written by a born Southerner, the son of a slave-owner 
and Confederate soldier. Mr. Smith has lived all his 
life among negroes, and feels that he is capable of seeing 
both sides of the problem he undertakes to discuss. 


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